Back Quote by Joyce Carol Oates

“Literature "has always been the last refuge, in this world, for those who do not know where to lay their dreaming heads.”

— Romaine Gary

“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are…

— Victor Null

Much as there are things about our own life stories that we can learn only from the systematic study of our dreams, there are…

— Elif Batuman

Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It…

— Abraham Verghese

Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an…

— Philip Roth

“The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.”

— Charles Simic

“Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcendence. Some people think…

— Susan Sontag

“At times I wondered whether writing was not a solipsistic luxury in countries like mine, where there were scant readers, so many people who…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Literature duplicates the experience of living in a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget…

— Barbara Kingsolver

Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities…

— M. H. Abrams

“Reading is primarily a symptom. Of a healthy imagination, of our interest in this and other worlds, of our ability to be still and…

— Mark Haddon

“fiction is necessary to life - not only as books but as dreams, dreams that frame the world and give it meaning.”

— Siri Hustvedt