Alain de Botton Quotes

If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

I've always loved the poetry in 'Pale Fire.' I think it's wonderful.

Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.

No one who loves life can ignore literature, and no one who loves literature can ignore life.

It's the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is.

It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

He taught me literature, and he actually taught me how to read. He was my personal mentor.

Hemingway's remarks are not literature.

I'm not a writer. I like being a reader.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide.

We're not in love with Literature all the time - especially when you have to teach it every day.

Find something that thrills you, and when you finish reading it for enjoyment, read it again line by line, paragraph by paragraph to see what you liked about it.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure.

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

I can appreciate other writers' works.

We take literature too seriously.

We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.

An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.

One measures oncoming old age by its deepening of Proust, and its deepening by Proust. How to read a novel? Lovingly, if it shows itself capable of accomodating one's love; and jealously, because it can become the image of one's limitations in time and space, and yet can give the Proustian blessing of more life.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

I believe an appreciation for simplicity, the everyday - the ability to dive deeply into the banal and discover life's hidden richness - is where success, let alone happiness, emerges.