Quotes About Literature

Books were escape. Books were freedom.

I can't lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.

If a writer knows what he or she is doing, I'll go along for the ride. If he or she doesn't... well, I'm in my fifties now, and there are a lot of books out there. I don't have time to waste with the poorly written ones.

You know, King said, I'm not much good at telling stories. That sounds like a paradox, but it's not; it's the reason I write them down.

All I can say in my own defense is quot libros, quam breve tempus—so many books, so little time (and yes, I have the tee-shirt).

Looking back on it, I sometimes think my life was like a Dickens novel, only with swearing.

There are also books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words - the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers that won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

In many ways, Eulah-Beulah prepared me for literary criticism. After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face and yell Pow!, The Village Voice holds few terrors.

Easy reading is the product of hard writing

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot…reading is the creative center of a writer's life…you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

For readers, one of life's most electrifying discoveries is that they are readers—not just capable of doing it (which Morris already knew), but in love with it. Hopelessly. Head over heels.

A life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is...like a life without pictures.

Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there," Hardy supposedly said, "the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones." I understood because that was what I felt like in those interminable, dissembling days: a bag of bones.

I know you," she said. "You're Stephen King. You write those scary stories. That's all right, some people like them, but not me. I like uplifting stories, like that Shawshank Redemption." "I wrote that too," I said. "No you didn't," she said, and went on her way. The

There's nothing I like better than a good book discussion with someone who can hold up his end of the argument.

I'm the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

People assume any twentieth-century white male writer must be an alcoholic.

there will always be books. ... Books are real objects . Books are friends . ... They're also ideas and emotions.

Finest kind of dope. Book-Valium. No more heebie-jeebies. No more whim-whams

Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don't understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it's good, not why it doesn't when it's bad.

Me cae bien la gente que lee libros, y no sólo porque yo solía escribirlos. Los lectores de libros están tan dispuestos como cualquiera a iniciar una conversación con el tema del tiempo, pero son capaces de pasar de ahí.

la buena literatura podía ser embriagadora sin renunciar al hilo conductor de las ideas.

Obliqueness is the curse of the reading class.

Hicks was examining the paperbacks Maura had culled from the shelves: Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Joe Hill.