Quotes about Literature

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

Literature has the same impact as a match lit in the middle of a field in the middle of the night. The match illuminates relatively little, but it enables us to see how much darkness surrounds it.

It's not four days ago I find a bastard squatting here, asking me if I read books. Like he would jump me with a book or something. Take me for a ride with the telephone directory.

Read anthing, trash or trashier; and listen to thrash. Espceially 83-90 era. They will absorb you. You will be in dire need of beer. Now that's something you must be picky of.

Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe. (on Mark Twain)

I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamed that I was reading on, so I awoke from sheer boredom.

Books are not made for furniture,but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.