Quote by Sarah Arthur

“...Tolstoy's characters seem to come forward to meet you, very conscious of the impression they are making on one another and on the reader.”

— Stephen Spender

“No. We never have read a line of Tolstoy. We studiously avoid doing so.”

— Frederick Rolfe

“I reached over, opened it in the middle, and began reading Tolstoy's War and Peace. Nothing had changed. It was still a lousy book.”

— Charles Bukowski

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed . . . Tolstoy,” he”

— Brandt Legg

“If the world could write itself, it would write like Tolstoy.”

— Isaac Babel

“[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine.”

— Edward Abbey

“They certified that I was sane; but I know that I am mad." This confession gives us the key to what is most important…

— Lev Shestov

“Tolstoy’s interest in history began early in his life. It seems to have arisen not from interest in the past as such, but from…

— Isaiah Berlin

“quoting Tolstoy: “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and…

— James Gleick

“I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime writer who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific…

— James Ellroy

“The decrees of society are temporary ones; what Tolstoy is interested in are the eternal demands of morality.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Epilogues are for Tolstoy”

— E.M. Forster