Asked Quote by Kate Bush

I managed to get my copy of Ulysses through safely this time. I rather wish I had never read it. It gives me an…

— George Orwell

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could have made me do it, or prevented me from doing…

— Anonymous

I look upon literature as an art, and I believe that if you misuse it or abuse it, it will leave you. It is…

— Katherine Anne Porter

While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I…

— Nicholson Baker

“Once we reject lyricism, to blacken a page becomes an ordeal: what’s the use of writing in order to say exactly what we had…

— Emil Cioran

You can't sort of write the novel as if you're taking dictation from heaven.

— Martin Amis

Though people may read more into Ulysses than I ever intended, who is to say that they are wrong: do any of us know…

— James Joyce

“But my considered opinion, after long reflection, is that, whilst in many places the effect of "Ulysses" on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic,…

— John Munro Woolsey

I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure.

— Nora Roberts

I'm not saying it never occurred to me to want to write a masterpiece, but I really doubt I could.

— Lucy Hawking

I did not write it (Uncle Tom's Cabin). God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing,…

— Raymond Queneau