#literature

As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life. And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#teens #writing #young-adult-literature #life

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! ↗

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#literature #reading #terrorism

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#literature #self-discovery #path

Les personnages de nos autres vies sont des fantômes que la littérature fait revivre. ↗

— Olivier Weber

#africa #colonialism #french-writer #literature #report

Too many writers are trying to write with too shallow an education. Whether they go to college or not is immaterial...a good writer needs a sense of the history of literature to be successful as a writer. ↗

— James Kisner

#writing #education

I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets. ↗

— Roman Payne

#europe #fortune #fortunes #gypsies #gypsy

It was a time I slept in many rooms, called myself by many names. I wandered through the quarters of the city like alluvium wanders the river banks. I knew every kind of joy, ascents of every hue. Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs. ↗

— Roman Payne

#literature #payne #roman #rooftop-soliloquy #love

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#words #writing #literature

Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. ↗

— George Carlin

#children-s-literature #literature

The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary. ↗

— Italo Calvino

#inadequacy-of-words #language #literature #writing #literature