Quotes About Literature

Yes, I've won prizes for putting words on a computer.

Literature is one of those realms in which giving out prizes can seem not merely dubious but positively obtuse.

I'm not sure that the culture of literary prizes is always a good thing, but while there are literary prizes, it's nice to be nominated.

Everything is allowable in literature, but what is not allowable in criticism is objection on the grounds of probability.

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

The central problem of novel-writing is causality.

I'm a language-oriented writer who proceeds sentence by sentence.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

The herbalist I met a few times - it was great - she gave me literature about the different processes that an herbalist would do to make medicines from certain herbs and things.

A scrupulous man will never produce a great novel.

I think kids will read more good books than we can possibly produce.

I think it's more important to write something that brings men back to reading than it is to write for people who already read. There's a reason men don't read, and it's because books don't serve men. It's time we produce books that serve men.

The smart way to build a literary career is you create an identifiable product, then reliably produce that product so people know what they are going to get. That's the smart way to build a career, but not the fun way. Maybe you can think about being less successful and happier. That's an option, too.

England produced Shakespeare, and the British Empire the six-shilling novel.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

I came to feel that, in addition to Imre Kertesz, Hungary has produced at least three contemporary novelists who deserve the Nobel: Peter Nadas, Peter Esterhazy and Laszlo Krasznahorkai.

I here ask pardon of all my compatriots for everything of which I have been guilty towards them. I know that, by my ill-considered and immature works, I have brought distress to many and that I have even provoked others to attack me openly and, in general, have produced displeasure in many.

I think there is a chance that Indian writers in America will start producing very interesting books in the years to come.

From an early age, my favorite thing to read was novels. For years, when I was writing only nonfiction, still I was reading almost exclusively novels. It's weird to be producing something that you don't consume. It feels really alienating.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production.

I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.

My father used to act in high school. He was in a production of 'Othello;' I don't know who he played, but it wasn't Othello. He would talk about it, though, and read Shakespeare to me.