Quotes About Literature

I've grown more and more appreciative of good writing, and I now really hope I can become a better and better writer.

I have been very interested in the number of kids who have read the Sherlock Holmes books after reading the Mary Russell books. That's great. That's more or less how I rediscovered the Holmes books.

If you live in a country where there is nothing comparable to free information, often literature becomes the only way to be more or less informed about what's going on.

America is the big subject of the second half of the 20th century, tackled in one form or another by all the great American male writers. You could make a case for saying that it was the only game in town - from Bellow to Roth to Updike to Richard Ford - America was more or less explicitly the leitmotif.

More people should read books. It's the most concentrated experience you can have.

I think 'Miracle's Boys' made more people aware of my work.

The simple fact is, the more people who buy your books, the more are likely to read you. That's what I'd like to see happen.

Why do I love Roald Dahl? His voice, more than anything. It's irreproducible. It's so musical, and it's funny even when it's not trying to be, which is most of the time.

We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.

I'm a huge fan of the series of books by Cassandra Clare, 'The Mortal Instruments.'

A lot of people have always asked, is Penn Cage me? And I say no. There's an early character in an earlier novel, 'Mortal Fear,' that's closer to me.

Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.

I remember reading Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' in my grandmother's Moscow apartment and feeling this call to be a better person.

I don't think that Slaughterhouse-Five was successful movie material. In fact, Vonnegut's books mostly I don't feel are movie material.

What fascinated me mostly about Mickey Cohen was that he, in his later years, hired someone to help him to comprehend literature, to help him to read better, to understand words better.

A glimpse at my night stand gives the mostly true impression that I am a book hoarder.

I had a couple of friends, but I was mostly the kid with his nose in a book.

When my mother read 'The Joy Luck Club', she was always complaining to me how she had to tell her friends that, no, she was not the mother or any of the mothers in the book.

Life develops, changes, is in motion. The forms of literature are not.

I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.

There isn't a lot written about the motorcycle culture.

Of all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth — and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound.

All serious work in fiction is autobiographical.

I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.