Quotes About Literature

No, I don't harbor any mystical ideas about writing, Your Honor, it's work like any other kind of craft; the power of literature, I've always thought, lies in how willful the act of making it is.

I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself.

Oulipo ends where the work begins.

One way to be aware of it, to teach to yourself, is simply to read work aloud. I love reading the endings of books aloud when I start nearing the end.

I get asked to read new works a lot, in the hope that I will give a quotation and I will only give a 'puff' for a book I truly love.

Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering work in thinking about literature philosophically.

The e-book revolution has made it very easy to pay writers a good deal less than what their work is worth. I do strongly believe that we writers ought to hold out for much better royalties.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.

The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer.

I do most of my reading on the train ride to and from work. But I always have a book in my handbag so that I can read at any time, anywhere.

'All Our Yesterdays' was unquestionably the best work I have ever done. And the reading public stayed away in droves.

Are there sexual fetishes that involve books? There must be. I try not to imagine how they might work.

It's obvious that I come down on the side of free speech for anybody's work.

I am especially indebted to a 10th grade English teacher who encouraged me to read great works of literature.

I was reading Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, and I'm still very, very deeply moved by Gwendolyn Brooks's life and her work.

I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author.

I probably shouldn't admit this since I work in the tech industry, but I still prefer reading paper books.

Only two things happen to writers when they die: Either their work survives, or it becomes forgotten.

I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.

The writers or artists I write about are not necessarily those I care most about (Shakespeare is still my favourite writer) but those whose work I feel has been neglected.

I much prefer to work with dead writers, and ones who were writing four hundred years ago.

I had a short story collection come out in 2006, and then I couldn't work on large projects for a long time because I was finishing my doctoral degree.

It is an admonition to myself when I am reading other people's books. Writing a book is very difficult to do, even a bad one. I try to remember that when reading someone else's work.