Quotes About Literature

I haven't read Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare - except 'The Merchant of Venice' in ninth grade. I'm not familiar with 'Death of a Salesman.' I haven't read Tennessee Williams.

'A Streetcar Named Desire' is the play I've probably read the most times in my life, and I love the weirdness of all the scene outs but especially the end of the second scene, when Williams brings a tamale vendor on stage to simply say, 'Red hot!'

Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

In the era of Venus Williams, girliness and goo isn't the way to every woman's heart. Yet publishers presume that women only buy a book that looks soft and that appears to be all about women, even if it isn't. Yet women, unlike men, buy books by and about both sexes.

The book that made me cry hardest was 'Stoner,' by John Williams.

I love Tennessee Williams; as a playwright, he's so poetic.

Tennessee Williams moves my soul.

If I were a teacher, I would like to teach freshman English - so I could be the Robin Williams type in 'Dead Poets Society.'

I always tell people there's only one trick to writing: You have to write something that people are willing to pay money to read. It doesn't have to be very good, necessarily, but somebody, somewhere, has got to be willing to pay money for it.

I love real books, paper books, but I also love buying online, and I think that people are more willing to take a chance to read something if it's cheaper - sometimes books on the Kindle are $6. A hardback book is $25. For $25, it better be a really great book. Or you're going to be mad.

Jacqueline Woodson's books are such a gift to parents and children for their poignant subtlety and lyricism and their willingness to let a reader dwell in the pangs of realization that we sometimes try to protect our children from.

Books fall from Garry Wills like leaves from a maple tree in a sort of permanent October.

Tony Wilson once compared me to WB Yeats. It didn't really mean that much because I didn't have a clue who Yeats was.

There were a number of books about Bill Wilson, and by him, but a lot of the basic biographical tasks had not been done.

I like people like Andre Malraux, Edmund Wilson, Willa Cather, Robert Graves, Erik Erikson, and Francis Steegmuller.

Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson have both been writing for a long time. In 30 years, will writers of that quality have been able to serve the same sort of apprenticeship? Not unless they can make enough money now to live on.

The person whose work introduced me to the craft was Lorraine Hansberry. The person who taught me to love the craft was Tennessee Williams. The person who really taught me the power of the craft was August Wilson, and the person who taught me the political heft of the craft was Arthur Miller.

If I were to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - which I think it's fairly safe to say is not going to happen - I would still expect the headline on my obituary to read: 'Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr., is dead at 78.'

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about 'Wind in the Willows' and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought - you know about 'The Wind in the Willows.'

'Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case,' 'The Secret of the Old Clock,' 'Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret,' 'Flowers in the Attic,' 'Gone With the Wind' - these are the books that defined my childhood. They thrilled me. They made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world.

I'm not a fan of 'Gone With the Wind.' I didn't like the movie. I didn't like the book.

When I was 8, I was reading 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Pride and Prejudice' and all that, not knowing it wasn't my reading level.

I love those books like 'Gone with the Wind,' the huge, sweeping family sagas.

The book that meant most to me was 'The Wind in the Willows.' It sounds ridiculous, but that was my vision of England.