Quotes About Literature

The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.

I love essays, but they're not always the best way to communicate to a larger audience.

My books were attacked constantly by the Communist Party for not hewing to the Party line. I have never hewed to a Party line of any kind.

The writers of books are companions in one's life and, as such, are often more interesting than other companions.

It's extremely dangerous to compare anyone else to Shakespeare.

Don't go around asking the question, 'Is this character likeable?' and expect that to be compatible with serious literary endeavours. That's not what it's about.

Of course I want to be a best seller because I'm in the business and I want to be read, but there is no money in the world that can compensate for writing badly.

If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.

I don't think I'm any competition to the already-existing canon of writers in Kannada. How can I ever even think of comparing myself?

I found the writing arena to be much less competitive.

I haven't read for pleasure in 35 years. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure from what I read... For me, it's gotten so that it doesn't seem as though I've read a book unless I've written about it. It really seems the completion of the reading process.

I admire Turgenev, Camus, Proust and Shakespeare, but I've also learnt a lot about writing from composers and artists.

I don't think one can write from a compromised moral position.

I grew up loving computers and math, actually. I also loved English literature and French, but I became obsessed with computers when the Apple II was coming out.

I don't bother with computers, although I have an electronic reader.

When you have a book out, it's like a period of protracted or concentrated megalomania, and it's really not normal or good for you or any of that.

Science fiction literature's focus is on ideas, the concept of change, and the impact on humanity. Those concepts are hard to capture on film. They work better in the mind.

Since I was a kid, I feel most confident when I'm reading.

When we read a book, we have a blurry image that's kind of physical but blurry. But we have an emotional image also. We have an emotional connection to the character.

I asked myself what it was that I wanted from writing and where my connection with books began, and the answer to that question was definitely in childhood, because that's where my connection with reading began.

A connection between poetry and blindness is a classical trope.

Whenever it is inspired by literature a film is elevated and the audience connects.

I've never really worked out this thought, and I don't know if I'm really conscious of it, but I can see there's an attraction about writing about a period that's over and isn't going to change colour while you look at it.

I noticed in America that if you write a book of any kind, you're made to be the representative of all the issues that might surround it.