Quotes About Literature

Whatever a writer gets paid for his book, it's never enough. I think that's true. It's hard work. But in the end, you wrote a book. It's something real and tangible that sits on a shelf forever.

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.

I don't read a lot of books that were published after 1755. One thing about having friends in New York who belong to the literary world, however, is that I have a steady stream of books coming to the house.

I fantasised about F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' - I loved it, and then I read everything J. D. Salinger had to offer. Then I was turned on to Kerouac, and his spontaneous prose, his stream of consciousness way of writing. I admired him so much, and I romanticised so much about the '40s and '50s.

The price of an e-book is a lot less than the price that we're charging for a hardcover book. It's about the same as we charge for a paperback. And that means a different revenue stream.

I'm in the theater because of two plays: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Death of a Salesman.'

Why would somebody just read a novel when they can see it on TV or in the cinema? I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can't and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel, you can get right inside somebody's head.

I get a little stressed even sometimes knowing all the things I want to read, I won't have enough time in this lifetime. The more you read, the more you realize there are fascinating books to be read and so little time to do so.

There are plenty of brilliant people who are too stressed out to read challenging literary novels.

I think picture books should stretch children. I think they should be full of wonderful, amazing words.

It's so important to read a book before bed and do some weird stretching.

Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

After college, I went on a real big classics kick. Read everything by Faulkner, Hemingway, Woolf, Proust, Dostoevsky. And that classics train dropped me off at 'Dracula.' Halfway through it, I understood I'd never be going back, never 'leaving' the genre again. Since then, I've been on a fairly strict horror diet.

While the books I read as a child lacked diversity in the strict sense, they didn't lack values. Reading, I didn't see me externally, but I felt me - my humanity.

'The Cauliflower' is not strictly a novel, as Barker says in her indispensable afterword.

Read as much as possible, especially the work of writers who most deeply affect you. Make those writers your family. Never wait for inspiration to strike before getting to work; be disciplined and form the habit of writing every day.

I love the look of books published by the firm of Rupert Hart-Davis: They strike me as handsome, elegant, and inviting. I'll pick up almost anything with that imprint, especially if it's in a jacket or priced low.

The standard publishing contract is replete with clauses that strip authors of control over their books.

I think, in a lot of ways, if you really strip down some of the most compelling novels, in a lot of ways, they're detective stories.

I don't judge anyone of any stripe by what they read. Reading is always good for you. It's a positive act.

It's a very powerful, emotional thing to read a book, and to reduce it to a series of questions in a test strips something away from the book.

I read 'Crime and Punishment' years ago and don't recall the details of it, but I do retain a strong sense of the creeping paranoia and panic.

Women have been writing strong women characters for a long time - hello, Maxine Hong Kingston! - it's just taken mainstream comics a really long while to catch up.

Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.