Quotes About Literature

What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.

Nothing we read can import new or foreign feelings that we don't, in one form or another, already possess.

Now, to read poetry at all is to have an ideal anthology of one's own, and in that possession to be incapable of content with the anthologies of all the world besides.

The most dazzling aspect of 'Possession' is Ms. Byatt's canny invention of letters, poems and diaries from the 19th century.

I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.

It wasn't until I started to read short stories - by people like Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, John Updike... Eudora Welty - that I became excited about the possibilities of writing.

Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.

I belong to Russian literature, but I am an American citizen, and I think it's the best possible combination.

It's true, some senior Hungarian writers are not known for their laughter. There is a strong Germanic influence - an attitude that if it's enjoyable it can't possibly be literature.

For a brief moment, Ian Fleming made being an Englishman seem sexy, even to the French. He should have been awarded a knighthood, even possibly the Garter.

Film and TV are the most popular mediums in America. Literature and poetry are possibly the most under-recognized art forms.

I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.

People who don't normally read make an exception for my books, possibly because they're short.

I was, as a kid, really obsessed with reading... that was about as geeky as you could possibly get.

I read way, way more Andre Norton than could possibly have been healthy. It was a short hop from her to the rest of the library's science fictional and fantastic holdings.

My favourite books are Charles Bukowski's 'Post Office' and 'Women.'

Now I have to have the biggest P.O. box in the entire post office to get all the manuscripts coming in.

A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.

Postmodernism cost literature its audience.

In the early '90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe, and I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading.

I admire the world of the books and the characters that she's created, but I'm not an addict of Harry Potter. I don't feel possessive about it.

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

'Harry Potter' achieved a very special act of actual magic: it made it completely acceptable for an adult to carry around, read and enjoy a children's book.