Joseph Joubert Quotes

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Literature is the immortality of speech.

The reason is that till date, in spite of advances in information technology and strategies of information, the written word in the form of books still remains one of humanity's most enduring legacies.

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.

The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.

Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.

I would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

A book is a book is a book.

The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.

When art has changed, it's because the world was changing.

In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of theatrical images can affect life there more powerfully and stealthily than speeches, or even legislation. Imagined worlds can lodge deeply in the private sphere, dislodging much else, especially when the public sphere is fragile.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.

The written word is everything.

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.

Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.

I want to change the world. I want to be a part of culture. I want to help teach.

It seems inevitable that the magic of the written word will fade.

The novel has always been a contradictory form. Here is a long form narrative mainly read originally by consumers who were only newly literate or limited in their literacy. The novel ranked below poetry, essay and history in prestige for a long time.

'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry and 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think that says a lot about an author's writing.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

My mother was a huge, huge reader. I think I picked up very early how precious it was to write things in books and have people like my mother glued to the page.

I definitely feel that films and TV shows can bring about social change.

Literature births activists.