The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The asymmetries of power that have shaped relations between the West and the rest of the world also exist in the realm… — Pankaj Mishra Copy Share Image
“It may be true that we all have a novel inside of us. Better in than out in the present case. Burning… — Rodney Ulyate Copy Share Image
“Above all, for his merciless, contemptuous treatment of Clifford Chatterley, blown to bits in Flanders in 1918, Lawrence can be damned to… — Germaine Greer Copy Share Image
“t this point I would like to return to the question of the plot movement and the different narrative levels of the… — Ian Gregor Copy Share Image
“Nearly all our older poetry was written and read by men to whom the distinction between poetry and rhetoric, in its modern… — C.S. Lewis Copy Share Image
“[T]his is how it will remain until ... literary criticism discards its sociological, religious, philosophical and other textbooks, which only help mediocrity… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
My literary criticism has become less specifically academic. I was really writing literary history in The New Poetic, but my general practice… — Christian Karlson Stead Copy Share Image
“Dryden was a highly prolific literary figure, a professional writer who was at the centre of all the greatest debates of his… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs." [ Time Magazine , October 31, 1977]” — John Osborne Copy Share Image
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic. — Anne Stevenson Copy Share Image
“Novels, says Sartre, are not life, but they owe our power upon us, as upon himself as an infant, to the fact… — Frank Kermode Copy Share Image
“The daughter of the literary biographer Leslie Stephen, and close friend of the innovative biographer of the Victorians, Lytton Strachey, Woolf herself… — Jane Goldman Copy Share Image
“Old English poetry is characterised by a number of poetic tropes which enable a writer to describe things indirectly and which require… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“If you love my work, you are a good critic. If you do not love my work, you are a 'not good'… — Roman Payne Copy Share Image
“How to explain the sheer tingling joy one experiences when two interesting, complex, and occasionally aggravating characters have at last settled their… — Margaret C. Sullivan Copy Share Image
“The writer should have a comprehensive outlook. He should aim at a holistic understanding of the prevailing social, political and economic conditions.… — Jayakanthan Copy Share Image
“In my freshman and sophomore years of college, I read dozens of books by the great thinkers of Western civilization. From Plato… — Stefanie Weisman Copy Share Image
“The heart of [J.G.] Ballard's vision [is] the object at odds with its function and abandoned by its time.” — Tacita Dean Copy Share Image
“The critic's aim should be to interpret the work they are writing about and help readers appreciate it, by defining and analysing… — David Cecil Copy Share Image
Strict rules of evidence would destroy psychoanalysis and literary criticism. — Mason Cooley Copy Share Image
“Pearl introduces an original story, in a form which was to become one of the most frequent in mediaeval literature, the dream-vision.… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“The ones that landed near the bathroom are Bad Tolkien imitations or transcripts of a D&D adventure; bad Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov… — Sharyn McCrumb Copy Share Image
Literary criticism is generally bunk. Nonsense. Usually based on self-serving post-intellectual bullshit. — John Fante Copy Share Image
“A novel, in which all is created by the author's whim, must strike a more profound level of truth, or it is… — Steven Brust Copy Share Image
