One great advantage which poetry has over prose--one sense in which, we might even say, it is considerably more beautiful--is that... it fills up space approximately three times as rapidly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal... than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Good-by, my book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees will rise--but his creator strolls aw...ay. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have put The End: the shadows of my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow's morning haze--nor does this terminate the phrase.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Miss Dudley ... gives one the idea of a lightly-sparred yacht in mid- ocean; unexpected; you ask yourself what the devil she is d...oing there. She sails gaily along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough weather coming. She never read a book, I believe, in her life. She tries to paint, but she is only a second-rate amateur and will never be any thing more, though she has done one or two things which I give you my word I would like to have done myself. She picks up all she knows without an effort and knows nothing well, yet she seems to understand whatever is said. Her mind is as irregular as her face, and both have the same peculiarity. I notice that the lines of her eyebrows, nose and mouth all end with a slight upward curve like a yacht's sails, which gives a kind of hopefulness and self-confidence to her expression. Mind and face have the same curves."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Books are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to e...ffect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation,... the wait, the growing heaviness (not of body in this case but of the spirit and the manuscript) toward the end, the initial delight at the sight of the product, fully formed and seemingly perfect, and then the usual postpartum depression. What will people whose opinion I care about, and those whose views I don't value but have weight in the world of reader, think of it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other, as a whole and in its details, whatever gaps, excepti...ons, or weaknesses it may contain, treats of the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting- point, and the point of arrival is the soul. Hydra at the beginning, an angel at the end.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Because film operates in real time, it is more limited. Novels end only when they feel like it. Film is, in general, restricted to... what Shakespeare called "the short two hours' traffic of our stage." Popular novels have been a vast reservoir of material for commercial films over the years.... But commercial film still can't reproduce the range of the novel in time. An average screenplay, for example, is 125 to 150 pages in length; the average novel twice that. Almost invariably, details of incident are lost in the translation from book to film.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The bald little prompter shuts his book, as the light fades gently. The end, the end. They all go back to their everyday life (and... Clare goes back to her grave)Mbut the hero remains, for try as I may, I cannot get out of my part: Sebastian's mask clings to my face, the likeness will not be washed off. I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we are both someone whom neither of us knows.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »