“The poet must always, in every instance, have the vibrant word... that by it s trenchancy can so wound my soul that it whimpers.... One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret power of the word; one must be able to give one s writing unexpected effects. It must have a hectic, anguished vehemence, so that it rushes past like a gust of air, and it must have a latent, roistering tenderness so that it creeps and steals one s mind; it must be able to ring out like a sea-shanty in a tremendous hour, in the time of the tempest, and it must be able to sigh like one who, in tearful mood, sobs in his inmost heart.”
“I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.”
“If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one s very own.”
“فإنْ كانَ قلبكِ يا سيّدتي شيئاً غيرَ القلوب فما نحنُ شيئاً غيرَ النّاس , وَ إنْ كنتِ هندسةً وحدها في بناءِ الحبِّ فما خُلقتْ أعمارنا في هندستكِ للقياس , وَ هبي قلبكِ خُلقَ مربّعاً أفلا يسعنا ضلعٌ من أضلاعه , أوْ مدوّراً أفلا يُمسكنا محيطه في نقطة منْ انخفاضه أو ارتفاعه , وَ هبيه مثلّثا فاجعلينا منهُ بقيّةً في الزّاوية أو مستطيلاً فدعينا نمتدُّ معه وَ لوْ إلى ناحية ...!”
“We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.”
“We all come out from Gogol s Overcoat .”
“Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.”
“To risk life to save a smile on a face of a woman or a child is the secret of chivalry.”
“have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?”
“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream--a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”
“Montag sentiu que o livro eu escondera batia como um outro coração contra o seu peito.”
“Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up in bed till early dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack, simply to find out what happens to some people who, you know perfectly well, are made up.”
“There were people who read and there were the others. Whether you were the a reader or a non-reader was soon apparent. There was no greater distinction between people.”
“You can woo a girl with a poem, but you can t hold onto her with a poem. Not even with a poetry movement.”
“They blossomed, they did not talk about blossoming.”
“In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams.”
“It was literature in its finest sense, since it made Unk courageous, watchful, and secretly free.”