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When a man prides himself on being able to understand and interpret a difficult book, say to yourself: If the book had been well written this man would have nothing on which to pride himself.
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The collectors only consider, the greater fame a writer is in possession of, the more trash he may bear to have tacked to him.
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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
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People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.
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I divide all literary works into two categories: those I like and those I don't like. No other criterion exists for me.
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Books give the same turn to our thoughts that company does to our conversation, without loading our memories, or making us even sensible of the change.
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Animal Liberation has a lot of handicaps. First and most obvious is the fact that members of the exploited group cannot themselves make an organized protest against the treatment they receive (though they can and do protest to the best of their abilities individually). We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. You can appreciate how serious this handicap is by asking yourself how long blacks would have had to wait for equal rights if they had not been able to stand up for themselves and demand it. The less able a group is to stand up and organize against oppression, the more easily it is oppressed.
from the book "" by Peter Singer
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A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end but not necessarily in that order.
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If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.
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I would have liked for my books to have been recognized posthumously, at least in capitalist countries, where you turn into a kind of merchandise.
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