Literary Criticism Quotes

Literary Criticism Quote of the day

If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.

In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.American novels, answered Lord Henry.

The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.

These are my habits and the way I spend my life: studying literature.

The way contemporary literature is emerging, soon we can expect "Item poetry" in novels.

It seems to me that my whole life I've been standing on some tower or a pillbox or a trampoline, waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. And the first person I had to rescue was myself.

Write it as easy as you think about the difficulty

Consciousness is the materia poetica that Shakespeare sculpts as Michelangelo sculpts marble. We feel the consciousness of Hamlet or Iago, and our own consciousness strangely expands.

To deprive the derelicts of hope is right, and to sustain them in their illusory "pipe dreams" is right also.

Even at the moment when the last page is turned, a great part of the book, its finer detail, is already vague and doubtful. A little later, after a few days or months, how much is really left of it?

The Lethean Library, for all its incalculable volumes, is, I know, sadly incomplete without Mr. Goodman's effort.

I would have died, before a literary agent ever committed to my book. This is why I chose to empower myself by self publishing.

The most important thing about reading is not the level of sophistication of the books on your self. There is no prerequisite reading regimen for being a bookworm.

There is no God but God, and his name is William Shakespeare.

Literature has become merely a tool for culture studies.

If you tell me bad things about someone, you're telling bad things about me behind me

I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense. The defenses vary from poet to poet. But the overwhelming presence of love is vital to understanding how great literature works.

That's why literature is so fascinating. It's always up for interpretation, and could be a hundred different things to a hundred different people. It's never the same thing twice.

The heart of [J.G.] Ballard's vision [is] the object at odds with its function and abandoned by its time.

CUSTOMER (to her friend): What's this literary criticism section? Is it for books that complain about other books?

In our Impulsive nature to write and repulsive nature to read that has led to a decline in literary genius in our times!

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.", October 31, 1977]

You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.

If you love my work, you are a good critic. If you do not love my work, you are a 'not good' critic.

Literature is news which stays news.