Quotes About Literature

I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians.

The object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse.

I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.

I write with as much objectivity as I can.

I think of it as the lasagna approach to writing because I'm always adding layers. I'll sometimes do it layer by layer, with dialogue, attribution, action, objects in the scene, setting... It can be sometimes that delineated.

The Shakespeare that Shakespeare became is the name that's attached to these astonishing objects that he left behind.

'Sharp Objects' is honestly one of my most exciting reading experiences.

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

I used to feel an obligation to invent things. I felt I was a failure because I didn't do massive great novels about Australia or the outback or something. I just don't feel that any more.

You can't explain collateralized debt obligation in a novel - it's too draggy.

Charles Dickens is a lot of fun to read but it's not obscure, and that's just fine.

I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.

I'm obsessed with Maggie Nelson's work.

I'm obsessed with books.

I was an obsessive fantasy reader from the time I could read at all.

I think I'm probably quite geeky in a lot of ways. I'm pretty into books, kind of obsessive about that.

I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.

In Britain, the great hidden secret of talking animals and children's literature is how political it was in its bones, beneath the obvious cuteness.

I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical.

I travel a lot, read a lot, meet my friends, like to cook occasionally.

Catch-22' is the big daddy of funny war novels. It's capacious and occasionally rambling. It's a bible of literate comedy: you can find anything you want inside - it's all in there.

Most of the authors I liked were dead, so it didn't seem like a safe occupation.

Ever since I could first write I have been doing so. When I was taught how to write and read at school, I made up my mind that this was what I love to do best and this was the world I was going to occupy.

I've always seen TV as... it didn't occupy the same rarefied space as literature, but it's art you can use day to day. I've never been hung up on where it figures in the hierarchy of learning.