Quotes About Literature

In Ireland, a writer is looked upon as a failed conversationalist.

Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.

Memoirs: the backstairs of history.

No tears and the writer, no tears and the reader.

The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James 1st, James 2nd, and the Old Pretender.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.

There is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

Writers should be read - but neither seen nor heard.

If we try to envisage an 'average Canadian writer' we can see him living near a campus, teaching at least part-time at university level, mingling too much for his work's good with academics, doing as much writing as he can for the CBC, and always hoping for a Canada Council Fellowship.

That's not writing, that's typing.

I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

Writers are the engineers of human souls.

Caesar had perished from the world of men Had not his sword been rescued by his pen.

Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

Get black on white.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.'

Flaubert had infinite correction to perform.

When an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate them by his best.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

Footnotes, the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.

I like prefaces. I read them. Sometimes I do not read any further.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

There are two kinds of writers - the great ones who can give you truths, and the lesser ones, who can only give you themselves.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with a little assistance from a professor of Greek and a few poets.