Quotes About Literature

I think when you're writing anything you should never be thinking about hardcore genre fans.

The Bible has done more harm than any other book in the world.

I chose deliberately for Harry Bosch to age chronologically with the books.

When I was young, I loved a series of books by an author called Maud Hart Lovelace and the series, which is still around, I'm happy to say, is - they're the 'Betsy-Tacy' books.

Harvard has enough panegyrists without me.

At Harvard, I majored in English Literature.

The middlebrow, I hate.

I hated the fact that I had to read 'Moby-Dick' as a senior in high school.

I hated teaching Shakespeare. In order for the students to understand what was going on, you had to tell them the story of 'Macbeth' or whatever. Shakespeare is about character and language, and they didn't get any of that.

Even though I hadn't read a word of it, I grew up hating 'Moby-Dick.'

I grew up in a haunted house, reading Dr. Seuss.

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.

So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana.

Especially since having children, a lot of the time if you ask me, 'Have you read that book?' the answer would be 'not personally.'

I don't think any writer is a friend to the reader if he or she is not funny.

I think for anybody reading the book they're going to get an idea in their heads of all those characters, and I think that once that gets fixed, it's quite hard to shake.

I'm reading 'Ten Storey Love Song' by Richard Milward. I read his first novel, 'Apples,' after hearing a reading of his in the Hague. I really enjoyed it, so I've started this one.

The awful thing, as a kid reading, was that you came to the end of the story, and that was it. I mean, it would be heartbreaking that there was no more of it.

I wrote a piece for the school literary magazine that now makes me think: 'My God in Heaven, this is just the worst drivel.'

I think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh.

My mama loved books; I became fascinated by the wonderful stories that came out of these things she held in her hand - and started to make them up myself.

I am not a Hemingway aficionado.

Gertrude Stein really thought of Hemingway as frail. He almost married Stein.

I'm probably better known for boxing with Hemingway than for anything I've written.