Books Quote by Oscar Wilde

“wish to deal with my most distinguished contemporaries, not personally or in a merely literary manner, but in relation to the real body of…

— G.K. Chesterton

During five literary generations every enlightened person had despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten…

— George Orwell

“First, there must be talent, much talent. Talent such as Kipling had. Then there must be discipline. The discipline of Flaubert. Then there must…

— Ernest Hemingway

The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.

— Frank Norris

“The novelist might be greater possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and…

— William Dean Howells

A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if he's any…

— Michael Cunningham

“...a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend…

— E. B. White

“The shoddy writer wants only publication. He fails to recognize that almost anyone willing to devote between twelve and fourteen hours a day to…

— John Gardner

“A writer lives, at least, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies…

— William Sansom

A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies…

— William Sansom

“Criticism as a form of knowledge is capable of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and explicit ideology but of its ideas…

— Toni Morrison

Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot…

— Philip Larkin