Quotes About Literature

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

If we ever head down the American path of banning certain books or turning the editorial process into one of censorship, we will risk turning teens off books and sending them elsewhere - to their X-Boxes, for instance. To the Internet. And they won't ever come back to books.

Turning the pages of a favourite book creates a very special bond with our grandchildren, but it's not just an indulgent pleasure.

When I was turning 40, I felt that there were no books out there that hit the spot in terms of what I wanted to read.

When you read a book, you are letting another person distract your thoughts and work your emotions. If they are adept, there's nothing better than turning off and getting lost.

Historians turning their hands to fiction are all the rage. Since Alison Weir led the way in 2006, an ever-growing number of established non-fiction writers - Giles Milton, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Harry Sidebottom, Patrick Bishop, Ian Mortimer and myself included - have written historical novels.

Let me say that discovering Tagore was the turning point of my life.

If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.

'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns.

Our most fundamental social need, it turns out, to my amazement, is love. Now, I'm not a hippie-dippie whatever. If you look at the literature, our most fundamental need for children is an environment of maximum love, and that they can be hugged, kissed, and loved. That's what humanises us and allows us to realise our whole dimension.

I think a man turns into a writer by editing his own texts.

I'm personally attracted to great writing - that's what turns me on the most.

In 1970, somebody once asked me whether I thought my books would still be around in 40 years, and I thought, 'How would I know, and why would I care?' Well, it turns out I really do care.

My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.

I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment.

I think readers are always patient. Look at the 'Harry Potter' series. Some have given up on this generation of kids as game and TV addicts, but lots of people spend lots of time patiently reading through hundreds of pages of dense prose. I think reading a comic by comparison is a lot more immediate.

Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback.

I never read. The paper or anything. I watch a lot of movies, and TV series and stuff. But I never, never read.

Of every movie that I've seen multiple times, of every TV show that I was obsessed with, I don't think I was ever obsessed with anything more than 'Flowers in the Attic,' which I read 13 times between fourth grade and senior year.

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

Lincoln was the Twain of our politics.

Mark Twain's Roughing It is a book that many people don't know about, but I highly recommend to anybody at any age.

Mark Twain is as big as America. He really is.

I first read 'Tom Sawyer' when I was in 8th grade, 13 years old. I realised since that Mark Twain just bottled what it felt like to be a child.