Quotes About Literature

As 'Possession' progresses, it seems less and less like the usual satire about academia and more like something by Jorge Luis Borges.

A surprising number of teens I meet in rougher schools around the country find refuge in novels and creative writing. It's not always the usual suspects either, the high achievers.

It's a heartening fact about the human race that utopian fiction precedes dystopian fiction in the evolution of literature.

If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.

I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.

Of course the success of A Boy's Own Story took me utterly off guard.

In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive.

I was, without a sliver of a doubt, a no-good, lazy slacker of a child, and after I discovered literature, I was totally and utterly a no-good, lazy slacker of a child who read books. A lot of books, good and bad, but my favourite - the books I read and reread in my teens - were by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situation.

Many fantasy novels - 'Lord of the Rings', for instance, or 'Lavondyss' by Robert Holdstock - are beautifully written. Geoff Ryman's 'The Child Garden' is exquisite and utterly beguiling. Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' trilogy is an astonishing piece of multi-faceted storytelling. So quality of writing does not condemn the genre.

I long for books; I am utterly greedy about them.

'Hamlet' is so modern; 'Coriolanus' is utterly alien to our consciousness, and that makes it difficult for us.

What surprised me about 'The Casual Vacancy' was not just how good it was, but the particular way in which it was good.

I can't picture going to a beach, or anywhere on vacation, without a couple of books as companions.

Books were a huge part of my childhood growing up. We would go on vacation, and my mom was always carting manuscripts around.

I'm pleased to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I realize I am a writer people buy to take on vacation.

When I go on vacation, I take very few clothes and a whole lot of books. It's the most soothing thing in the world. Reading 'Moby-Dick' is like being in a time machine. I almost feel as excited as the first time I read it and I always find something new.

I've only read three books by Stephen King. When I was 10 I read 'The Long Walk,' one of his pseudonymous Bachman books. In my early 20s, while trapped on a family vacation, I read 'The Dark Half,' which taught me a word I have never forgotten: psychopomp. Now I have read '11/22/63.'

Literary novelists who have a strong handle on plot are often characterized as good vacation reads because they manage to transport you elsewhere, away from the petty facts of ordinary life.

Books have literally powered most of my life. Whether as a stress relief when doing hard things or as vacation fodder, they are a constant and important part of my life.

Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.

With 'Interpreter,' I didn't know it was ever going to be a book, that they were going to be published. I was writing them in a vacuum for the most part. They were my apprentice work. Then the stories happened to become a book.