Books Quote by Philip Pullman

“You don’t see the point of English literature?’ ‘I don’t see the point of studying it. Surely one just reads it?”

— Kate Atkinson

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic…

— Ann Patchett

I grew up on British fiction, and I write perhaps more directly out of that tradition.

— Claire Messud

I think in general there's no point in going into a field like English literature if you're not going to have fun with it.

— Louis Menand

No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.

— H. P. Lovecraft

A novel can educate to some extent, but first a novel has to entertain. That's the contract with the reader: you give me ten…

— Barbara Kingsolver

I think fiction is important because it has the power to transport a reader into another life.

— Anthony Doerr

I went to study English for two reasons. Principally because when I was in university, studying drama wasn't considered an option. You couldn't get…

— James Callis

I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with…

— Jeffrey Eugenides

“I craved a form of naive realism. I paid special attention, I craned my readerly neck whenever a London street I knew was mentioned,…

— Ian McEwan

Reading was really my only training in fiction writing. I never took a class or read a book on how to write. I just…

— Stephenie Meyer

“we read fiction to satisfy a more basic need—to imagine our way into other lives, to explore characters and situations that tell us something…

— Tom Perrotta