Quotes About Literature

I liked the books I read that said things like 'I shan't'. I would try to find a way to say in my life, to reply, 'I shan't do that, mother.' That was so far away from my barrio world.

I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.

The shores of the Black Sea lend themselves to the literary genre that may be classified as 'cultural pilgrimage,' which is not just a higher form of travel writing but which has the further mission of reporting on present conditions and supplying neglected knowledge.

I've always been a sci-fi/fantasy guy. My book reports in school, whenever you didn't have to do it on Shakespeare, I did it on, like, Piers Anthony and Raymond Feist.

Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.

For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.

When I'm feeling frustrated with a story, I have faith that it's going to come. Also, when I first started writing, I wanted to write the stories that were not in my childhood, to represent people who hadn't historically been represented in literature.

What women represent to the male is, historically, a big burden. It's a lovely dream, but it's the stuff of literature, art, and everything. Living up to what the male psyche projects onto the female is the stuff of books. You'd need a lot more than an interview to go into it!

I think if you're impregnated with good literature, with good culture, you're much more difficult to manipulate, and you're much more aware of the dangers that powers represent.

Representative institutions are as much a part of the true Briton as his language and his literature.

The first book I ever really read was Plato's 'Republic,' and then I had to go over that five times or something.

If a Canadian novel hasn't been a box-office success, say, 'The Republic of Love,' then producers are reluctant to try again.

I'm a huge Hunter S. Thompson fan.

'A People's History of the United States' was actually a very big book for me. I read it in high school, and I felt like my mind was really blown by it. I think the truth is I read it because it's referenced in 'Good Will Hunting.'

Is literature more important than hurting people? You can't argue that. You can't say it. It's impossible.

I'm a biographer; I can live with a little hyperbole.

All great characters, great icons, in literature are a bit of a riddle, and that's the reason we go back to them over and over.

I like to read in the bathtub. Ideally, that bathtub would be located on a small Greek island.

I write mostly for pleasure, and the reading should ideally be for pleasure, too.

Ideally, I would like everyone in the world to read and love my novels. In fact, I can't believe that everyone in the world doesn't love them. What is there not to love?

I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

I didn't have that many black people in my life, so I had to sort of search them out. And I didn't grow up in America, but I identified as much with their writing about the black experience as I did with their writing about the human experience.

A lot of cookbooks also have incredible food writing, even though I feel like a lot of cookbook authors don't necessarily identify with being writers.

When you read something, and especially when you're reading compellingly great, that becomes part of your identity, at least while you're reading it. You become changed by reading it.