Quotes About Literature

I was always influenced by language.

I enjoy being influenced by other writers.

I don't believe that there is any particular book that influenced any 'career' I might have.

Probably every book I read influenced me in some small way. Authors like Jan Westcott, Kathleen Winsor, Catherine Cookson, Georgette Heyer, and even Barbara Cartland taught me to write character-driven stories.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

Most writers have been influenced by Faulkner.

It is easy to club people together, but there are bound to be influences of authors you've read. I grew up reading fast paced authors such as Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer, but to say I'm one of them isn't true; my style is intrinsically my own.

Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences.

I'd say my biggest influences are writers like Andre Norton and, particularly when it comes to the Radch, C.J. Cherryh.

Skipp and Spector's 'Books of the Dead' were huge influences on me as a writer.

For me, influences really come from everywhere: literature, comics, movies, anime, Internet, science, real-life situations. In fact, I think that writing is just about living.

Many books have mattered enormously to my life and work. 'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens would be one of several contenders for 'most influential.' I first read it at 13 and have reread it dozens of times since.

'Das Kapital,' I think, is very difficult to read, and for me, it was not very influential.

Being influential is not the mark of a great book.

If you look at the purported dangers of salt or fat, there is no consensus of support in scientific literature. So I would ask first: 'Is it possible to have an informed government that actually follows the science?' From what I've seen, it's not likely.

I love writing for young people. It's the literature that was most important to me, the stories that shaped me and informed my own journey as a writer.

I read a lot of science fiction, and it's ingrained, in a certain way, and I've been very involved with Kerouac and the Beats, but before that, it was a lot of science fiction.

I don't really have a bucket list, but if I did, one entry would be to dust off my college Russian and spend a big chunk of a year reading, or trying to read, 'War and Peace' as it was meant to be read, in Russian, with all that rumbly rocks-on-rocks poetry inherent to the language.

At Knopf, everything is inherited.

I never wanted to be a writer initially. It was not my thing, but I was an avid reader.

The thing I like most about books is that anybody can afford them. They have an innate valuelessness.

Long before 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid', 'Dork Diaries', and the graphic novel explosion, only a small press like Tricycle was willing to take a risk on such an innovative format.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

History class was a forty-minute squirm from which I would emerge unscathed by insight. Down the hall in English Lit, though, there were stories to be had, and it was stories I craved.