Eudora-welty Quote by Eudora Welty

Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.

— Wallace Stevens

The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of…

— Will Self

First of all, the novel should be a critique of the novels that have come before it in a language that broadens the audience…

— Kiese Laymon

I think the novel is the American form because people read it in private, and the only valuable things that happen in America happen…

— David Hare

American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.

— Gore Vidal

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There…

— Hemingway, Ernest

[Henry] James is much more complex than Jane Austen. That's why it's not so easy to adapt him. People expect a nice period piece,…

— Agnieszka Holland

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

— W. Somerset Maugham

American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be…

— Christopher Dawson

Cooper wrote a novel which is absolutely indistinguishable from Austen, completely from a female point of view, completely English, no sense that he was…

— Leslie Fiedler

I can't imagine how American readers will react to a novel, but if the story is appealing it doesn't matter much if you don't…

— Haruki Murakami

Evidently, there are many great American writers. But sometimes it can feel as though American fiction is dominated by relatively linear narrative form, with…

— Katie Kitamura