Country Quote by Daniel Mendelsohn

When I first read 'On the Road,' it helped me figure out how to live against the grain. Now I wonder how to be…

— Tony D'Souza

You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise…

— Robert Harris

“That first day I asked my students what they thought fiction should accomplish, why one should bother to read fiction at all. It was…

— Azar Nafisi

Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts...

— Mark Vonnegut

There is still such a thing as subversive. Subversive makes hip people nervous. It's something new that scares you in a good way. I…

— John Waters

Letting ourselves down in some fashion is such an integral part of daily life that the paucity of literature on the subject is baffling.

— Lionel Shriver

“We have so long been subject to external criticism that we don’t know how to react to internal criticism, because whereas the most enduring,…

— Foz Meadows

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate…

— Neil Gaiman

Yet there are some critics in the nonfiction world who still look at some of today's stranger interpretations of the essay and say "You…

— John D'Agata

“For me, literature is a revolutionary force, it requires courage and risk-taking, it must have the ability to thrust you out of your comfort…

— Margaret Mazzantini

“novels have the power to transport you into another existence, and see the world from a different point of view.”

— Ella Berthoud

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will…

— Curtis Sittenfeld