Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The disappointing second novel is measured against the brilliant first novel - often no novel lives up to the first. Literary improvement seems like an unfair expectation.
Emerson was such an important figure in our literary history, and in the moral and religious development of our people, that attention cannot be directed to him too often.
First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.
Why is it okay to write a work of literary fiction where horrible, explicit things happen, where you can't write a book of humor where silly, explicit things are happening?
I have a lot in common with Lewis Carroll's Alice (my favorite female literary heroine, besides Becky Sharp). I've been sent on a journey to places even bleach can't reach.
Literature has been a treacherous site for black Americans because literary production has been so tied with the project of proving our humanity through the act of writing.
From the very first, my countrymen have followed my literary career, now criticizing, now praising my work, but hardly ever letting a single word be buried in indifference.
I am a literary animal. For me, everything ends in literature.
I don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.
All my big heroes are literary, writers.
When it's between the covers of a book, content is perceived to have literary substance - or more so that it might otherwise.
Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing.
I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world.
My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers.
The most important thing for me is realism. I don't like writing which does somersaults on the page, and I'm no great fan of the hard work literary novel.
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy.
Maybe when I'm sixty-five I'll talk about my literary life.
First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.
Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.
I always say, and I mean it, that the great break of my literary career was when I went to law school.
Jimmy Baldwin was not only a writer, an international literary figure: he was a man, spirit, voice - old and black and terrible as that first ancestor.
Part of the reasons I have lived the life I have is because I wanted to have an adventurous life. But my best adventures are more literary than political.
I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.
A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.
We now open our mail with gloves and mask, though I can't imagine why anyone would target a literary agency!
I'm not sure that the culture of literary prizes is always a good thing, but while there are literary prizes, it's nice to be nominated.
I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy.
I know that at literary festivals I'm speaking mostly to middle-class women, who frequently vote in a way that is contrary to how I'd like them to vote.
No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.
The Festival of Books is indeed a well-oiled machine, one which leaves most of the other literary festivals in America, including vaunted Brooklyn's, in the dust.
I write literary biographies, so above all, I have to love the subject's books. But choosing a subject is tough.
Back when I was young, lists seemed like fences on the open range. But secretly, I was pleased to be corralled among other literary thoroughbreds.
There is a disconnect between the film Bond and the literary Bond which is their contemporaneity. I don't suffer from that.
I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment.
I think there are readers out there and I don't think the book is dead. And more importantly I don't think readers have to choose between literary and commercial fiction.
Food is a great literary theme. Food in eternity, food and sex, food and lust. Food is a part of the whole of life. Food is not separate.
The literary interview won't tell you what a writer is like. Far more compellingly to some, it will tell you what a writer is like to interview.
My mom and dad were actors when they were younger and had a horrible experience of it. My dad became a literary agent and my mom a casting director.
I'd done occasional short stories, but I don't like publishing them in literary magazines; they treat you too much like college boys.
We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'
If you call it a romance, it will never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other respectable literary venue. And that's okay. I can live with that.
I don't think I found my voice until I reached New York. I suppose it's possible I would have had some kind of different literary career if I had not discovered New York.
German writers in the late 18th century were the first to uphold a prickly, literary nationalism, in reaction to the then dominance and prestige of French literature.
Generally, literary prizes are significant not for who the winner is but the discussion they create around books.
I think quite a misguided literary culture has grown up in the 20th century that says a book has to have a seriousness of purpose and a seriousness of language.
The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one's greatness of soul.
I have no very sophisticated understanding of literary forms. Short stories are shorter than novels, and poems are typically shorter than either, though not always.
The word 'western' usually refers to movies, of course, but there is a literary tradition of the same name that pre-dates the moving picture and retains its vitality yet.
Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.