Literary Quotes · Page 4

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

— Mason Cooley

We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime.

— Bill James

My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected.

— Robert Harris

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

— Manuel Puig

My attitude is a result of your actions. So if you don't like my attitude, blame yourself.

— Anonymous

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

— Hunter S. Thompson

“Words define us, they explain us, and, on occasion, they serve to control or isolate us.”

— Pip Williams

Anyone aspiring to literary greatness should read 'New Grub Street' and weep.

— Tina Brown

Emerson was the chief figure in the American transcendental movement, a fact that complicates all accounts of him in literary or cultural…

— Howard Mumford Jones

For me, the term "literary fiction" means there's always attention paid to language, and linguistic experimentation, sophistication.

— Karen Russell

“Every single day I have missed you. I grieve for the moments we have had together and I long for the moments…

— Kristin Maddock

“When a Wanderess has been caged, or perched with her wings clipped, She lives like a Stoic, She lives most heroic, smiling…

— Roman Payne

I tend more towards what some people call literary science fiction, but what I mean by that is that it is full…

— Edward Einhorn

Maybe I should be a literary agent. I'm good at picking up on books that become successful before it happens. I could…

— Lynne Ramsay

In literary art, as in the art of the architect, the painter, the musician, signs that the artist is thinking of his…

— Herbert Spencer

Having a literary agent makes a huge difference in submitting work. My agent has access and tremendous passion.

— Jacqueline Carey

“Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, “Diable! Diable!” And then chants…

— Cole Alpaugh

Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only…

— Theodore Sturgeon

Life is a very orderly thing, but in fiction there is a huge liberation and freedom. I can do what I like.…

— Kate Atkinson

Anytime an African-American writes an unconventional novel, the writer gets compared to Ellison. But that's O.K. I am working in the African-American…

— Colson Whitehead

I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've…

— Doris Lessing

I was working at the 'Evening Standard' when I heard that there was a job going as deputy literary editor on the…

— Claire Tomalin

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it…

— Henry James

Books help to form us. If you cut me open, you will find volume after volume, page after page, the contents of…

— Susan Hill

Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless…

— Margaret Atwood

It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that…

— Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

“I've been thinking about all the things I might have done differently. All the choices I didn't make. All the decisions that…

— Jonathan Evison

“Poetry is the most potent of all literary forms. If prose is candle light, poetry is dawn.”

— Abhijit Naskar

You don't have to be dead to write a classic, and you don't have to be literary to be smart.

— Lisa Scottoline

“You realize assuming can often lead to getting into trouble.”

— March Lions

In the early 1980s, I spent a year working as an assistant at the Elaine Markson Literary Agency.

— Joanna Scott

“nothing is straightforward in the world of literary taste.”

— Lynne Truss

“The biggest mistake you can make is thinking you know who you are.”

— J.P. Bloch

“Never underestimate the value of superior hair as a literary influence.”

— Margaret Atwood

I think what matters most in literary work is the context, not the text.

— Andrea Hirata

I never think of people's literary potential when I meet them, but people do audition.

— Carol Drinkwater

“Love enters later in life through the cracks left by the first heartbreak.”

— D. Biswas

There are all kinds of under-represented groups in the literary establishment.

— Janette Turner Hospital

George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing.

— Atul Gawande

Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson