Quotes About Literature

People mostly associate Tagore only with Gitanjali. That is the mistake they make. Gitanjali is just one per cent of his oeuvre.

American Gods is about 200,000 words long, and I'm sure there are words that are simply in there 'cause I like them. I know I couldn't justify each and every one of them.

Science fiction is not a genre that has much respect in China. Critics have long been discouraged from paying attention to the category, dismissed as a branch of juvenile literature.

I like the construction of sentences and the juxtaposition of words-not just how they sound or what they mean, but even what they look like.

I don't want to turn 50 and say, 'Gosh, I wish I'd lived in that part of the world for a time. I wish I'd read that book by Faulkner.' I want time to delve back into Thoreau and Kafka.

Kafka is still unrecognized. He thought he was a comic writer.

A friend of mine that I was in a band with started me on Kafka, which in turn led to Camus and Sartre.

One of the influences of Kafka over later writers is not so much in the content of his work as in its form.

I did my dissertation on Kafka.

If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.

In Czechoslovakia, we consider Kafka a very funny man. A humorist.

I've never been that keen on Shakespeare.

I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place.

All best-of lists should close with the amazing Kelly Link.

I think Dennis Kelly's a really good writer.

I would like to see 'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole adapted.

I did modern English and American literature at Kent University, with no Chaucer and no Middle English: a perfect course.

When I read interviews with people like Kevin Barry or Colin Barrett, who I hugely admire, they don't really seem to come up against the question of likeability even though their characters, in some instances, are really horrible.

I did start reading quite young but I was always read to by my parents, who are both actors. Bedtime stories from when I was about two/three to when I was about 15. In fact they didn't stop until I eventually kind of kicked them out of my bedroom.

When I was a kid, I loved 'Little Women.'

I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read 'King Lear.'

I teethed on books of heroes such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and King David.

I've made a dog's breakfast of English history, geography, 'King Lear,' and the English language in general.

I don't aspire at present to be king of the hill in American literature.