Quotes About Literature

Particularly for English people, Shakespeare is always at the forefront of both drama and the English language. He's always been there. I can't remember starting school and not learning about him.

People are starting to refer to 'The Giver' as a classic, but I don't know how that is defined. But if it means that 10, 20, 50 years from now kids will still be reading it, that is kind of awe-inspiring.

The starting point for English work must be the ability to handle effectively their own experience. Oral work, written work and the discussion of literature must create an atmosphere in which the pupils become confident of the full acceptability of the material of their own experience.

I mark the reading of 'Look Homeward, Angel' as one of the pivotal events of my life. It starts off with the single greatest, knock-your-socks-off first page I have ever come across in my careful reading of world literature.

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

I'm finding myself increasingly attracted to literature that starts with pessimism as it's leading point and goes from there.

Ireland starts for me with the end of 'The Dead,' which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.

Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly.

When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.

When you write about a Muslim woman, like I did with my previous novels - 'Minaret', for example, which is about a woman who starts to wear the hijab - it sets all the alarm bells ringing.

First and foremost, it's got to be on the page. It starts with the writing.

My parents would read those books to me as well but they used to make me starving when I was a kid because they were always eating ham sandwiches with the crusts off and drinking ginger beer.

I have personally seen statements that were longer than some books I have read.

I don't try to sugarcoat things, but I also think my books make positive statements about the people and values in small-town America.

According to my royalty statements, 'The Green Progression' sold 392 copies in hardcover.

It's great that I can look up a fact instantly on my cellphone, but I miss the days in my room with a dog-eared, text-heavy paperback, immersed in the statistics of crime and punishment and lunacy, completely alone with the narrative of human depravity.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Russian writers enjoy almost sacred status.

Calling one thing 'literature' and another 'fiction' is a way to create status where there is none.

I was disinclined to have the status of a writer.

I hate to sound blase about it, but literary status is not important to me. Being happy is important to me.

When I was in my 20s in the 1970s, I read all of Jean Rhys. I have reread very little since because the first impressions were so powerful they have stayed with me.

I was very lucky to have a father who read to us when we were children. And he didn't just read books - he brought them alive. We couldn't wait for the next chapter. So my love of reading started early and has stayed with me all my life.

I wish that the adults who are 'in power' cared more about what their children read. Books are incredibly powerful when we are young - the books I read as a child have stayed with me my entire life - and yet, the people who write about books, for the most part, completely ignore children's literature.