Quotes About Literature

If I couldn't use food or love to define contentment, I would use reading.

As a schoolboy, poetry seemed defined by preciousness. It was all very rarefied.

My master's degree was in English literature.

I read my father's books growing up. I thought then and I still think now that his writing is wonderful. It delights and infuriates me in equal measure that he's still that good.

If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion.

I am there to entertain. I call my work high escape fiction; it's high, it's good - but it's escape, and I have no delusions about that. I have no ambition to be a serious writer, whatever that means.

The writing I do makes great demands on translators.

I don't know how you can understand other people or yourself if you haven't read a lot of books. I just don't think you're equipped to deal with the demands and decisions of life, particularly in your dealings with other people.

My childhood may have been more demented than most, because I learned to read very early and was allowed to read whatever I wanted.

There is no denying the aesthetics of a well-made, well-loved book.

I wasn't a model schoolboy. Of course, I was forced to sit through Shakespeare and I really got into some of it, though it depended on who was reading it out.

I'm always reading several books at the same time, depending on how deeply engrossed in it I am, if it's fiction and if it captures me.

There are, I'm depressed to say, many classics I have not yet read and will probably never get around to, though I will not stop short of hospitalizing myself in the attempt.

My view, as one who taught it, is that the whole purpose of a literary education should be to tell people that these things exist. I don't think any teacher should try to 'teach an author,' but rather simply describe what the author has written. And this is what I tried to do.

People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down.

When we read about reading, we get to share an experience that is usually kept private. Incisive descriptions of reading help us to understand what is going on when our eyes move across words on the page.

Literature taught me that I wasn't alone, that I could become a writer if I worked at it, that my story mattered. Whether a young reader becomes a writer or not, they deserve to know that their story, whatever it may be, is important.

If you want to take writing on, you should pay writing the respect it deserves, which is to say, reading it.

I have always been a reader. I was one of those kids desperate to learn. I would read anything.

If I'm desperate, I'll read anything. But even when I can be choosy, I still have no hard-and-fast rules. I have rules about what I won't read, rather than what I will. No science fiction, no romance, no chick lit. Although even these rules can be broken.

Being born at the tag-end of the baby boom, I was destined (or doomed, depending on how you look at it) to fall in love with sci-fi. It was one of my first literary loves, as a matter of fact.

I love the idea of seeing a character - I mean, there's nothing like seeing a character and having the huge detail and roundness that a character in a book can give you. It's so much more full than a character in a script can give you, isn't it?

I absolutely love Dorothy Dunnett's 'House of Niccolo' series and the 'Lymond Chronicles.' They are so detailed.

It seems to me that an author who has determined very new domains in literature is Gertrude Stein.