Literary Quotes

• Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

  

  Rick Moody
  • Problem
  • Literary
  • Bookstore

• But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.

  

  Rick Moody
  • Important
  • Whatever
  • Incessant

• Drama school introduced me to a world I had no idea about. I wasn't brought up in a literary household at all.

  

  Imelda Staunton
  • World
  • School
  • Drama

• When you've finished reading every last thing by a famous writer, literary convention holds that you move on to his or her letters, the DVD extras peddled by publishers.

  

  Karan Mahajan
  • Famous
  • Writer
  • Publishers

• The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

  

  Lascelles Abercrombie
  • First
  • Literary
  • Meant To Be

• Something is missing in our culture. We can't quite celebrate the scientific literary tradition.

  

  Ian Mcewan
  • Culture
  • Missing
  • Celebrate

• I have written a lot about the fine arts, but I'd never written about the literary arts, and so on some level Dante really, you know, spoke to me, as new ground but also familiar ground.

  

  Dan Brown
  • Know
  • Written
  • Arts

• There can be no literary equivalent to truth.

  

  Laura Riding
  • Truth
  • Literary
  • Equivalent

• Cruelty is not a literary value.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Value
  • Cruelty
  • Literary

• My literary success meant nothing to me.

  

  Taylor Caldwell
  • Success
  • Me
  • Nothing

• The great break of my literary career was going to law school.

  

  Scott Turow
  • School
  • Career
  • Break

• I have no literary fears.

  

  Carlos Fuentes
  • Fears
  • Literary

• But it's not just a game of finding literary references.

  

  Dan Simmons
  • Game
  • Finding
  • Literary

• The latest literary discussions reflect a struggle between two artistic methods - romanticism and realism, with the latter clearly ascendant for the time being.

  

  Yevgeny Zamyatin
  • Realism
  • Discussions
  • Romanticism

• Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.

  

  Harold Brodkey
  • Die
  • New York
  • Reputation

• I call myself a literary agent simply to distinguish myself from actors' agents.

  

  Irving Paul Lazar
  • Myself
  • Call
  • Literary

• My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.

  

  Langston Hughes
  • Favorite
  • Literary
  • Mary

• Notoriety and public confession in the literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me.

  

  Jack Kerouac
  • Believe
  • Public
  • Confession

• Close friends consider me a literary snob.

  

  Rabih Alameddine
  • Friends
  • Me
  • Literary

• I like to be entertained, not smothered with 'literary' riddles.

  

  Dan Jenkins
  • Like
  • Literary
  • Entertained

• On the subject of literary genres, I've always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I'd love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Passion
  • Poetry
  • Person

• In general, fiction is divided into 'literary fiction' and 'commercial fiction.' Nobody can definitively say what separates one from the other, but that doesn't stop everybody from trying. Your book probably will be perceived as one or the other, and that will affect how it is read, packaged and marketed.

  

  Nancy Kress
  • Book
  • Me
  • Stop

• The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors; everything depends on the money.

  

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • Real
  • Money
  • Editors

• Michael Chabon is arguing in favor of what is at the same time an old-fashioned and very forward-thinking opening up - of taking off the class associations with those labels, because we grew up, or I certainly grew up, feeling that, "Oh, there's literary fiction, and beneath that, there's these other things." He's actually saying that they're all of equal merit, and in many cases, that work in the genres, or work that draws from the genres is more entertaining for readers, since it is our job to entertain people.

  

  Emily Barton
  • Job
  • Fiction
  • Grew Up

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