Quotes About Literature

When I was a kid, I went through the whole process of reading great literature and trying to be very widely read.

It's been said that I am the most widely read writer of the 20th century. The number of books I've sold runs into untold millions.

Authors are influenced by everything they've ever read. If you've read widely enough, it helps you create your own mix.

Butler's novel 'Kindred' may be the book most widely read by readers outside science fiction; it has been assigned as a text in classrooms and has sold steadily since its publication in 1979.

There are people out there who genuinely love literature, who genuinely love to read and read widely, who will never like, or even necessarily get, my books. That was a hard one to swallow, to not feel slighted by.

One of the most widely read novels by a black American is Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man.' It is his masterwork - it won the National Book Award in 1953 and catapulted my man to the highest levels of literary esteem.

Bradbury was the one guy who was published in places like the 'Saturday Evening Post.' He was the guy who brought science fiction to the masses. If he hadn't existed, science fiction would have been a well-kept secret in literature instead of a widely consumed phenomenon.

I try to write stories that will attract younger readers and make them feel part of a wider readership. I do not feel able to write books that are about, or even for, teenagers; and I am inclined to be suspicious of books which 'target' them.

When I wrote 'The Pregnant Widow' three or four years ago, I tried to reread my first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' because their young heroes are the same age. I couldn't finish it. It seemed to me so technically slapdash and weak.

Every publisher or agent I've ever met told me the same thing - that Irish readers don't want to read about the bad old days of the Troubles; neither do the English and Americans - they only want to read about the Ireland of The Quiet Man, when red-haired widows are riding bicycles and everyone else is on a horse.

Our daughter's name Arwynn comes from Arwen in 'Lord of the Rings' because my wife and I met for the first time in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford where J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis used to go to read out their stories to one another.

If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the reader in first person. If you go back to the earliest novels, this is happening to a wild extent, like 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Don Quixote'.

When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'

A number of American colleges are willing to pay a tempting amount to pinch and poke an author for a day or two.

I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.

The first book that they gave me was Jeannie, a young teenager. I went on with her maybe ten books.

I once made a check of all books in my fourth-grade classroom. Of the slightly more than six hundred books, almost one quarter had been published prior to the bombing of Hiroshima; 60 percent were either ten years old or older.

It took me ten years and seven books to bag an agent - it took me that long to start writing good.

I tend to look way back for my inspiration: H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe.

I always carry a book with me to read on the bus, and I tend to arrive everywhere early.

I don't really revise. I tend to rewrite.

I tend to think of stories and books as being for everyone, just with an 'entry reading age' rather than an age range.

I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

I'm trying to start reading books that you gain knowledge from in order to challenge myself more. As a rule, I tend to read easy reading/populist-type books, but I don't feel like I'm learning enough.