Quotes from John Sutherland

Unlike baked beans, loaves of breads, or Fuji apples, books, once consumed, do not disappear.

Books are] vital to learning. Half the population don't go to football matches but that doesn't make football any less important.

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.

Patron. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery').

Why read literature? Because it enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can. It makes us more human.

Academic readers of literary texts, since they do it for a living, tend to think they are more scrupulous than the general public who merely read for pleasure.

Every contact leaves a trace.

At the moment we are in a transitional or 'bridge' moment in our literary world. The electronic 'faux book' format which we cling to is an example of what the critic Marshall McLuhan called 'rear-mirrorism'. What he meant by this is that we always see the new in terms of the old. We hold on to the past because we are nervous about the future or feel unsure how to handle it. Children and comfort blankets come to mind.

Literature, at its best, does not simplify, but it enlarges our minds and sensibilities to the point where we can better handle complexity--even if, as is often the case, we don't entirely agree with what we are reading

Literature is the human mind at the very height of its ability to express and interpret the world around us. Literature, at its best, does not simplify, but it enlarges our minds and sensibilities to the point where we can better handle complexity--even if, as is often the case, we don't entirely agree with what we are reading.