Quotes About Literature

Very few economists foresaw the crisis, but a great many have tried retrospectively to explain it, generating a large literature of distinctly mixed quality.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (May 3, 1469 – June 21, 1527) was an Italian political philosopher, musician, poet, and romantic comedic playwright. He is a figure of the Italian Renaissance and a central figure of its political component, most widely known for his treatises on realist political theory (The Prince) on the one hand and republicanism (Discourses on Livy) on the other. Source: Wikipedia

I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church.

Who did she know in Raleigh who took the time off to fix a house? Or read Whitman or Eliot, finding images in the mind, thoughts of the spirit? Or hunted dawn from the bow of a canoe? These weren't the things that drove society, but she felt they shouldn't be treated as unimportant. They made living worthwhile.

I remember, in school during English lessons, I would ask the teacher what were the most difficult books to read, and when she'd say 'Ulysses' or something, I'd run off to the library to check out a copy, eager to attempt the most difficult mountain.

Any older actor knows the last great mountain to climb is to play King Lear and now, if I ever play Lear, I will have done the pre-preparation because I had to go into the play and read it over and over again.

I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me.

Independent booksellers tend to have good taste and big mouths.

If you feel like you don't have a choice to write it, write it. If you feel like you do have a choice, then move on, because there are so many books in the world.

For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.

I have 7,000 DVDs and Blu-rays. I have thousands of books - thousands - and roughly 15,000 comic books or something like that, hundreds of books about different art movements - the symbolists, the dadaists, the Pre-Raphaelites, the impressionists - you know, that I consult before I start every movie.

Politics is marginal, but literature moves along by indirection.

If you actually saw your favorite movie star who is also a great classical actor doing 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'Macbeth' or 'Taming of the Shrew,' it would be a great thing and a great thing for kids to get interested in language.

I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write. I think Charlize Theron would make a lovely Marie Antoinette.

It makes me proud not just to be a Canadian writer but to be a Canadian, to live in a country where we treat our writers like movie stars.

I always think of Gilbert Norrell as being Salieri to Jonathan Strange being Mozart.

Tagore almost invented the term multiculturalism. It's good to see it taking form.

Like most of my friends in school, I was a member of multiple circulating libraries; and all of us, to begin with, borrowed and read the same things.

I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.

After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.

At every turn, Molly Antopol's gorgeous debut story collection, 'The UnAmericans,' is firing on multiple cylinders.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

My mum was a librarian, and my dad worked in Greenland.

As Richard Pryor was to Eddie Murphy, that's what Kurt Vonnegut was to me.