Simon Schama Quotes

I have to admit that I only read 'War and Peace' when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then.

I only got 'War and Peace' on the third attempt.

'War and Peace' goes down a lot smoother than a Dan Brown novel, let me tell you.

Reading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about.

One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.

A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

Charles Dickens left us fifteen novels, and in an ideal world, everyone would read all of them.

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

The first book that really knocked me out was the 'Brothers Karamazov.' I read it when I was a senior in high school.

The truly great books are always novels: 'Anna Karenina,' 'The Brothers Karamazov,' 'The Magic Mountain.' Just as with 'Shahnameh,' I browse these books from time to time to remember how a great book works on us or to teach my students at Columbia University.

I love 'Anna Karenina.' It's in the top five books on my list. Tolstoy is unsurpassed in combining the grand with the trivial, that is, the small details which make up life.

Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.

I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

A great writer is a great writer... Tolstoy was not a woman, but 'Anna Karenina' is still a pretty good book.

When I was growing up, 'Anna Karenina' was one of my favourite books.

It was in a grim room on Eddy Street that I finally opened 'A Moveable Feast.' I read it all overnight. I read it again the next day.

I always really loved Russian literature, and I think Tolstoy's writing is full of a sense of melancholy and humanity, so it seems really modern.

'War and Peace' may be the most epic thing ever created by a human being.

In the summer of 1866, as Leo Tolstoy prepared for his serialized novel 'War and Peace' to be published as a single volume, he wrote to illustrator Mikhail Bashilov, hoping to commission drawings for the new edition of the novel, which he referred to by its original title,1805.

By the 1880s, English translations of both the French and the Russian editions were available, and Americans began to read 'War and Peace.'

I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, "Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task.

I think if I were reading to a grandchild, I might read Tolstoy's War and Peace. They would learn about Russia, they would learn about history, they would learn about human nature. They would learn about, "Can the individual make a difference or is it great forces?" Tolstoy is always battling with those large issues. Mostly, a whole world would come alive for them through that book.

In my 90-plus years, I have lived a multitude of lives.

Never read any book that is not a year old.

Did you know that the original title for War and Peace was War, What Is It Good For?