American life Quote by Michael Eric Dyson

Like Richard Ellmann on James Joyce, Arnold Rampersad on Ralph Ellison is in a class of its own. His masterful and magisterial book is…

— Cornel West

Arnold Rampersad's stunningly revealing biography has, at long last, unveiled-in magisterial prose-the very complex and vulnerable man behind Ralph Ellison's own masks and myths.…

— Henry Louis Gates

There is Harlan Ellison the human being, who takes a crap a couple of times a day, and who farts, and who eats chicken…

— Harlan Ellison

“This is man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate…

— Thomas Wolfe

“They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that's how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts that hide…

— Philip K. Dick

“Every so often an author comes along and changes the world. I am not that author!”

— Rachel Rueben

“Quite often, too, a writer who has for a time been believed to possess a great store of ordinarily profound ideas, and who is…

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am much interested and honoured by what you tell me of C. S. Lewis.

— Ruth Pitter

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The calling of an author is more than just to entertain, but also to share ones experiences with the world.”

— M.J. Stoddard

John Lewis is an icon in our society.

— Al Sharpton

“He who writes books that aim to convince is a comedian, too, just a comedian. What has he got to offer others, apart from…

— J.M.G. Le Clézio