Quotes About Literature

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

Hemingway was a jerk. I mean he was really a great jerk. He was a good writer, and he did all sorts of things that I would never have the courage to do, but I don't think I'd enjoy being in the same room with him. He's not my kind of person.

I wasn't trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn't have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

Unfortunately for my family, they have a writer in the family.

A writer wants something more than money for his work: he wants permanence.

When I came to America, I was already a writer, already published in Bosnia. I was planning to go back, but I had no choice but to stay here after the civil war, so I enrolled at Northwestern in a master's program and studied American literature.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

My favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.

The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.

Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.

I am trying to concentrate on books. You know, I love Dostoevsky; he's my favourite writer.

It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.

Mollie Hunter was both a great friend and a very fine writer for children. She was fascinated by Scotland's history and its folklore - almost all her novels reflect her tremendous knowledge of both.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

My first memory of the Harry Potter series was my little brother just falling into those books and not resurfacing until he was done. That J.K. Rowling got an entire generation reading is extraordinary - I'm amazed, thrilled, and proud to now be portraying one of that phenomenal writer's characters.

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

Even the revolutionary writer will err if he fails to grasp the enormous effectiveness of occasional understatement.

If you grow up in Ireland and read books then you really are obliged to attempt your own some time. It is not exactly a choice. I still don't know if I am a writer. Believe me, there are days when I have my doubts.

I love historical fiction because there's a literal truth, and there's an emotional truth, and what the fiction writer tries to create is that emotional truth.

I dreamt of being a writer once I started to read. I started to write 'Bonjour Tristesse' in bistros around the Sorbonne. I finished it, I sent it to editors. It was accepted.

Usually, as a fiction writer, you get e-mails saying, 'I liked your book,' or 'I didn't like it.' You don't get something saying, 'I'm really glad this is in the world.'

My favorite writer is Alice Munro. It's simply amazing how well she captures entire lifetimes in a single short story.