Quotes About Literature

When I was 14 or 15, our teacher introduced us to Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities.' It was just for entertainment - we read it aloud - and all of a sudden it became a treasure.

I think Shakespeare is everybody's treasure.

The creative treasure of Israel's artists and writers will survive forever.

The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.

One of the most treasured books that I own is Donald Allen's 'The New American Poetry, 1945-1960.' It was a totem of great importance and potency to my group of writer friends in college from 1960 to 1964.

Oh, I love to read more than anything. I always love the 'New Stories From the South' anthologies - I think it's the best short fiction collection anywhere, just filled with treasures.

It's always a treat for me to go to the British Library.

I think 'Gatsby' is hobbled, in part, by its status as a Great American Novel. People kind of roll their eyes before they've even opened it, treat it with a 'been there, done that' attitude. I know I did. It took me years to re-open the novel and see how much I'd missed.

Writers who aren't from rural states in the Midwest or the West often treat such people as if they were the Waltons or the Beverly Hillbillies.

Is the prestige conferred by the Man Booker prize for the book or me? I would prefer it on the book and for me to be treated ordinarily.

People often talk about the characters in books as if they were considering whom to invite to a dinner party. 'Oh, I just hated her - she was so mean.' 'He's a bully; I didn't like how he treated his mother.'

Books written by boys are given very different treatment to those written by girls: they're even given very different covers. People also expect, in this YA-booming world, girls to be less experimental than boys: girls are achieving a lot of success, but they're confined.

Hardcover and paperback forever. Someone carve that into a tree.

'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' by Betty Smith is one of my favorites. Even though it doesn't have any monsters or crazy fantasy in it, it's such a raw story, and I can really relate to the characters. I think it's a beautiful story.

To me, cinema is cinema. Cinema is one big tree with many branches. The same as literature. In literature, you don't just say, 'Oh, I bought some literature.' No, you say, 'I bought a novel' by so-and-so, or a book of essays by so-and-so.

It's embarrassing to admit how many times I've reread the following: 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,' '1984,' 'Lord of the Flies,' 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,' 'Germinal,' 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle,' and 'A Moveable Feast.'

I loved 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.' I read it later as an adult, but I loved 'We Have Always Lived in a Castle.' And that brings you around to 'The Lottery.' You can't pretend - it's a lottery in which you draw a name and people die. That's a short story, but it's such an incredible short story.

If I wrote a memoir, it would be like 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.'

By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors.

Trees are being saved because of the Kindle.

Too many trees are killed to print the words of people who may not have all that much to say, and authors and journalists are equally culpable in this regard.

Literatures, like trees and plants, are born of a land and in it flourish and die. But literatures, also like plants, may be carried abroad to take root in a foreign soil.

Most books are surplus to the world's requirements, and I am going to sound very conceited here, but I am trying to write books that aren't just using up trees.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.