Books Quote by Nicholas Royle

“Prior to any generalization about literature, literary texts have to be read, and the possibility of reading can never be taken for granted. It…

— Paul De Man

“I've seen many strange things in my work, my friend, but a wealthy lawyer who leaves everything to go write sonnets is not part…

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When I read…

— Jonathan Lethem

As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.

— Nathaniel Philbrick

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so…

— Kurt Vonnegut

“The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.”

— Charles Simic

I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet…

— Sven Birkerts

Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present.

— Laila Lalami

I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous…

— Woodrow Wilson

I realise that it is fashionable now to dismiss the traditional novel as something of an anachronism, but to me it is still a…

— Paule Marshall

“A classical work of literature can never be completely understood. But those who are educated and educating themselves must always desire to learn more…

— Friedrich Schlegel

“The only distinguishing characteristic of a literature professor at the millennium was that he or she wrote about other people's writing. Apart from that,…

— James Hynes