Quotes About Literature

Reading is exercise for our brains in the guise of pleasure. Books give us insight into other people, other cultures. They make us laugh. They make us think. If they are really good, they make us believe that we are better for having read them.

Personally, I don't trust people who go out of their way to state they never read or watch horror and insist there's something wrong with those of us who do.

Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves.

Some books inspire one to read, and some inspire one to write; for selfish reasons, I'm always looking for the latter.

The 1970s were so wonderful for women writers. There were all these women, and they were seen as doing the most interesting, innovative and exciting stuff in science fiction. I was inspired by that.

Reading while I'm writing ideally inspires my competitive side. When I read great writers, I want to be a better writer.

I always have a book that I use that somehow inspires my novels.

Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that.

Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims.

I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer, I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me.

But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.

My post-child period resulted in one instant change: I write shorter books for kids.

Eroticism is born at a time in civilisation when sexual instinct becomes deanimalised and enriched with contributions from art and from literature. A world of theatricality emerges around the act of love.

I'm grateful that I've enjoyed the support of libraries, bookshops and institutional funders.

I don't play any instruments, but I do read a lot.

Letting ourselves down in some fashion is such an integral part of daily life that the paucity of literature on the subject is baffling.

I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. It was a fairly conventional intellectual path to the Catholic church, I would say.

Some books that I've read on the Kindle, I've been like, 'I want that on my shelf.' Because it says, 'I'm the kind of person who has read this.' The kind of books that says, 'I'm serious and intellectual and historical and race-conscious.'

Sometimes you're reading something, and you don't know it will be important in your life. You're reading this script, and you start to get involved. It's not an intellectual experience.

Marguerite Duras was a very good friend of mine and an intellectual hero. She was also a sort of mother figure. Of course she was an influence.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

There are so many books I want to read. Difficult books. That's what I intend to do and what I'm longing for.

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it.