Books Quote by Brenda Shaughnessy

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them…

— Alan Bennett

What had brought me to New York in the autumn of 1972 was a letter of recommendation written by Norman Mailer, the author of…

— James Wolcott

Literature is not a sack race. There aren't real winners and losers in the Republic of Letters.

— Charles Baxter

It's like the query letter problem that I just mentioned, magnified a hundredfold. You might be good at telling a story, but that doesn't…

— Patrick Rothfuss

Nineteenth-century English literature I know; 19th-century sewage systems, not so much.

— Glen Duncan

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished…

— Terry Eagleton

He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be…

— Katherine Paterson

Everything is allowable in literature, but what is not allowable in criticism is objection on the grounds of probability.

— Howard Jacobson

The memoir by women, read by female readers, is considered a market form, not "great literature."

— Kate Zambreno

“We ought to know the history of our ancient ancestors.”

— Lailah Gifty Akita

You get below the Mason-Dixon line and you have some of the best music, culture, the two races, the literature, and it's so rich.

— Robert Duvall

But I think that of all the literature that I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was…

— Kwame Nkrumah