Quotes About Literature

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

I have this theory that people in Hollywood don't read. They read 'Vanity Fair' and then consider themselves terribly well read. I think I can basically write about anybody without getting caught.

Business students are very oriented to playing a role in the real world and accomplishing something, not training themselves to be scholars and contribute to the literature. Teaching in that kind of environment has focused me much more on the real world, how pieces of the theory I know can be applied to real-world situations.

My personal theory is that younger audiences disdain books - not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today's reader is smarter.

Adam Smith is misread as being amoral precisely because people don't read his first book, because they don't read 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments.'

I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature.

I'm not that well-versed in literary theory - I don't know what it is.

I do not think of literature as something confessional or therapeutic. I make sentences in order to be precise about experiences and things. I am urged by many things and no things in particular.

With almost every book I've written, my secret target audience is the young therapist. In this way, I am staying in my professorial role; I'm writing teaching stories and teaching novels.

I really don't feel that writing is therapy.

Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.

I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.

I have written about Chile extensively, and therefore I have read many books on the subject, mostly for research.

I was hugely formed by stories I was told as a child whether that was in a book, the cinema, theatre or television and probably television more than any medium is what influenced me as a child and formed my response to literature, story-telling and, therefore, the world around me.

I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.

I sense a kind of fear of writing black or Asian characters from non-ethnic writers, who perhaps feel that they don't know the culture and therefore can't write about it. By and large, if there's an Asian character, I might get a call. But if the character is called 'Philip,' the chances are I won't.

My guilty pleasure at the end of the day is an old thesaurus. I know that can lead to overwriting, but if words such as lambent, pyretic and boscy exist, how sad they should stay recondite.

All of my education at Harvard, then Oxford, then Paris was in literature - even my thesis was on Shakespeare.

I had written my master's thesis on Ezra Pound on 'The Cantos.' And don't ask me about it. I don't remember anything about it.

My thesis at school was on Wordsworth.

There are some books that get huge numbers of positive reviews, but reading them satiates people. They say, 'I've read enough now'.

I never expected to write a book about a slum in Ireland that was going to catapult me, as they say, into some kind of - onto the best seller list.

People think children's books are about teddy bears and little flowers. I realize people sometimes don't know what to do with my books because they say, 'Is it a children's book, and what age group?'

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'