Quotes About Literature

Language is too grand for these chaps; let's give them dialects!

Chinua Achebe (Author)

Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.

It was Aldous Huxley who observed, "Every man's memory is his private literature.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

Did you know that a lot of Emily Dickinson's poems can be sung to the theme from Gilligan's Island? Not kidding, this is totally legit.

Mr. Lemoncello bounced across the stage like a happy grasshopper.

I am feeling sad and blue. I need to see some books! Books make me happy.

The elite, and those who work for them, were never taught how to question the assumptions of their age. The socially important knowledge and cultural ideas embodied in history, literature, philosophy, and religion, which are at their core subversive and threatening to authority, have been banished from public discourse.

Of the birth of subgenres, there is no end. They arise like bubbles full of miraculous hopes and potentials from the Planckian foam of the canon, inspiring writers new and established alike.

For me, hip-hop was a mirror when young-adult books were not. I could see myself in a Nas song more than I could see myself in a book.

The reason I write romance is that I like happy endings. The idea, you know, 'It's not literature unless is ends badly,' and I really don't like that. There's enough misery and bad things happening in the world.

'Misery' left a lasting mark on me. When I die, it will be 'Kathy 'Misery' Bates Is Dead.'

I think quite a misguided literary culture has grown up in the 20th century that says a book has to have a seriousness of purpose and a seriousness of language.

'Heartbreak House' was a lot of fun for me. I must have missed that day at school. I'd never read it or seen it. It's one of those things that a lot of people are familiar with.

I've been missing Japanese literature so much of late.

I don't care if the audience is 600 Saul Bellows; I'm going to knock them dead with a comedy routine. I'm out there as a missionary for literature because, if people laugh and enjoy themselves, they might actually do something as bizarre as reading the book.

I think it is a mistake to identify a movie according to its language, as if movies were literature.

'Misty of Chincoteague', 'The Black Stallion', the 'Saddle Club' books, I read 'em all. I was horse-crazy.

Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He's hardcore to play because he's displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.

I've always been drawn to dark stories. I enjoy reading Flannery O'Connor, Patricia Highsmith, and Margaret Mitchell.

I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it's important not to mix the two up.

I have not been in a book club where there were any men, and I have not, in fact, heard of book groups that were mixed.

If you live on Nantucket, you can't avoid its history, and 'Moby Dick' is the way most of us get into Nantucket's history.