Quotes About Literature

I don't have a lot of time. I can give a poem a couple of lines, a short story a paragraph, and a novel a few pages, then if I can stop reading without a sense of loss, I do, and I go on to something else.

In the last twenty years the colleges have been emphasizing creative writing to such an extent that you almost feel that any idiot with a nickel's worth of talent can emerge from a writing class able to write a competent story. In fact, so many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence. We want competence, but competence by itself is deadly. What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.

Symbols are something [the writer] uses simply as a matter of course. You might say that theses are details that, while having their essential place in the literal level of the story, operate in depth as well as on the surface, increasing the story in every direction … the truer the symbol, the deeper it leads you, the more meaning it opens up

There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

The novel is a more diffused form and more suited to those who like to linger along the way; it also requires a more massive energy.

I don't recall that when I was in high school or college, any novel was ever presented to me to study as a novel. In fact, I was well on the way to getting a Master's degree in English before I really knew what fiction was, and I doubt if I would ever have learned then, had I not been trying to write it. I believe that it's perfectly possible to run a course of academic degrees in English and to emerge a seemingly respectable Ph.D. and still not know how to read fiction.

The reader may not see [these meanings], but they have their effect on him nonetheless. This is the way the modern novelist sinks, or hides his theme

The writer who position is Christian, and probably also the writer whose position is not, will begin to wonder at this point if there could not be some ugly correlation between our unparalleled prosperity and the stridency of these demands for a literature that shows us the joy of life. He may at least be permitted to ask if these screams for joy would be quite so piercing if joy were really more abundant in our prosperous society.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. The Nature and Aim of Fiction

Librarians are the last people you can trust about the inside of books.

Do you have any books the faculty doesn't particularly recommend?

Comme l'on serait savant si l'on connaissait bien seulement cinq à six livres. ( How wise one might be if one knew thoroughly only some half of a dozen books

Let us intoxicate ourselves with ink , since we lack the nectar of the gods

Neuken zegt mij niets meer. Mijn verlangen is te universeel, te permanent en te intens om er een bepaalde begeert op na te houden. Ik ga niet met vrouwen naar bed, maar ik doe als de dichter in jouw roman, ik verslind ze met mijn blik.

Flaubert Gustave Flaubert

I'm a big historical-fiction fan.

I absolutely love reading; it is a fantastic way of unwinding.

I think that my passion for writing fantasy began at about the same time as my passion for reading fantasy.

I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.

My mother had been a Latin teacher, and she was always very fascinated with words. She and I shared books and responded to them.

I was always the person in our class who was fascinated by new plays. I would go to the library all the time as new plays would come out.

I really like all of the characters in 'The Secret History' by Donna Tartt, especially Camilla, the one girl. I find her fascinating.

When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words.

They lard their lean books with the fat of others work.