Quotes About Literature

As a writer you have a duty to be a messenger.

I was in love with metaphors and similes and alliteration, just the play on the words. I was fascinated with that concept.

That's what I like most about writing fiction over journalism: the easy metaphors!

I knew the story of 'War Horse' very well. I had read the book even before I did the auditions. I'm a big fan of Michael Morpurgo.

I'm a big fan of Michael Morpurgo.

Michael Lewis has the amazing ability to take complex formulas and concepts and turn them into page-turners.

I've been influenced by so many different writers along the way - from Charles Dickens, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, John D. McDonald, and so many others - that it would take a page or two to list them all.

I'm a huge Michael Lewis fan.

I love Chris Crutcher, Sara Zarr, Lois Lowry, Elizabeth Scott, Madeleine L'Engle, Gordon Korman, Michelle Magorian, Heather Bouwman.

As a writer, I live in the world of literature and ideas, but I entered that world as an emigre from a medieval fiefdom, the sports world of Michigan.

Very few teachers or leaders in my small Michigan community ever discussed the issue of 'The Catcher in the Rye,' and certainly no one came to the 1951 Novel's defense.

I read a great deal of science fiction with consummate pleasure between, say, the ages of 12 and 16. Then I got away from it. In my mid- to late 20s, I started trying to write it.

I find the middle classes kind of boring. The middle class has kind of been beaten like a dead horse by fictional writers. It's old news, and literature is supposed to bring new news, and for me, I feel I have to go as far out as I can to try and tell the kind of stories I want to tell.

The day Bengali cinema lost touch with literature and started aping the south, the middle class audience stopped going to the cinema halls and later the larger audience too stopped going.

In middle school, I was really into the 'Redwall' series, about anthropomorphic rodents in medieval times. I had a bowl cut, too, if you need the full imagery.

'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte has been my all-time favorite book since I was in middle school.

English was always my favorite subject in middle school and high school.

I don't think people cry reading 'Midnight's Children,' but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie.

My first novel - the novel I wrote before 'Midnight's Children' - feels, to me, now, very - I mean, I get embarrassed when I see people reading it. You know, there are some people who, bizarrely, like it. Which I'm, you know, I'm happy for.

Without books, we might just melt into the airwaves and be just another set of blips.

Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.

My favourite authors are Milan Kundera and Jeanette Winterson.

'Lady Chatterley's Lover' is a novel that constitutes a milestone of English literature.

Shakespeare is like mother's milk to me.