Quotes About Literature

In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.

In my books you have to concentrate, but I work hard to make it that, when you do, the rewards are quite high.

I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.

Once when I went over my work with my Washington University professor, the late great Stanley Elkin, he pointed to a passage of mine and said: Stop vamping. It has remained a caution.

I'm a big fan of Tom Stoppard's work, and have been since I was in school where I studied him.

Few authors are so interesting as their work - they generally reserve their wit or trenchant sarcasm for their books.

Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.

SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.

Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering.

If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!

If anything I think postmodernism has the least impact on my work.

I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one of many.

I'd like to win a Booker Prize for writing. A Nobel Peace Prize for my work in peace... and I think that'll probably do.

No work of literature is the product of only one or two conscious ideas. A story is mysteriously dense of meaning.

Engaging and well paced, the book fills in the reality behind Vonnegut's work

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

I'm always reading. I have four books on my nightstand right now. The same is true with writing, I tend to work on several varying projects at once.

I'm a believer in the benefits of translation. It's a necessity and a privilege - it would be awful to be limited to reading authors who's work was composed in the languages I happen to have learned.

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.

When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take my work to the actual reading public.

I think Lindsay Kemp really introduced me to the work of Jean Genet, and through that, I kind of kept re-educating myself about other prose writers and poets.

We earnestly recommend young men to read what has been to ourselves a truly delightful work.

I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.