Quotes About Literature

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

Words are the essence of culture. Books are pure essence. They are not for women or for men, but for all of us. Without books, civilisation falls into the dark ages.

I don't normally do pure historical work.

Romantic fiction is the only purely feminine art form. All other art forms were shaped and are dominated by men.

I've read enough dreary campus novels to know more than I ever wanted to about the punctured Oxbridge academic psyche, and feel as if I've been through a mid-life crisis dozens of times, purely because I've foolishly grabbed a paperback by an author I've vaguely heard of.

I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry.

The Bible was not written for entertainment purposes, so it's a real hodgepodge and a compendium of all kinds of stuff.

On an average day, I have two things to read in my purse: a book and a play.

I didn't go to graduate school, where all the important writers seemed to be getting their start. I didn't pursue getting published in literary magazines. I didn't even send out countless pitch letters and manuscripts to agents.

I have my Poetry 180 project, which I've made my main project. We encourage high schools, because that's really where, for most people, poetry dies off and gets buried under other adolescent pursuits.

More than we sleep, play, or make love, we work. Yet despite - or perhaps because of - this dominant daily grind, much of our literature is biased toward other pursuits.

My mother used to push 'Wuthering Heights' on me as a boy, and I sensed from her breathy description of the story that it would make me laugh. I have no plans to find out if this is true.

I had 'Push' and 'The Paperboy' next to my bed for many years. Those are some of the great, great novels.

I first came across the script for 'Macbeth' between the ages of 11 and 12; it was the first book that shook my life. Because I did not yet understand that I could simply purchase it in a bookstore, I copied much of it by hand and took it home. My childhood imagination pushed me to feel like a co-author of the play.

I'm the least-experimental writer. The idea of trying things just for the sake of pushing the envelope, that's never really interested me.

My mom was big on education, big on reading, so she was always pushing books on me: 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' like, 'Read these books.' And it was like, man, I'm learning stuff that I just can't get anywhere else.

Pound's crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

I mean, every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to put mittens on it, right? It puts manners on it. And you don't want your novels to be mannered.

One of the things I've thought about 'Midnight's Children' is that it is a novel which puts a Muslim family at the centre of the Indian experience.

There are no new facts about the Kennedys, only new attitudes, a literature that, like the automobile industry, puts new bodies on old chassis.

What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.

Ulysses could have done with a good editor. You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.

For anyone to take the time to care about what I write and read a book is so flattering to me because it's fun.

I never came across a character who was brilliant, funny, flawed and just happened to have a disability. That's why I've written 'The Amazing Edie Eckhart.'