Books Quote by Rebecca West

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few…

— Edna Ferber

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

— Andre Gide

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

— Paul Valery

Poetry criticism at its worst today is mean in spirit and spiteful in intent, as if determined to inflict the wound that will spur…

— David Lehman

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.

— Andre Gide

We can never know that a piece of writing is bad unless we have begun by trying to read it as if it was…

— C. S. Lewis

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!

— Philip Larkin

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it come as sincerely from the author's soul

— Aldous Huxley

If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The…

— Ayn Rand

For even bad poetry has relevance for what it does not say for what it leaves out.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

All good writers are sensitive to clichés and endeavor to avoid them

— Ben Yagoda