Literature Quotes

"The job is to make language work."

"I never wanted to be a writer."

"Fiction is about what it is to be human and we are human."

"The work of the poet is to name what hasn't been named."

"Language is how we make meaning."

"Confused literature instead of providing clarification."

"The struggle of literature is the struggle of one man against oblivion."

"Good writers define reality; bad ones merely transcribe it."

"A poem is a form of mathematical truth."

"Real life is the novel, and the novel is real life."

"Literature shows us who we could be if we dared."

"Literature is the conversation across time with those who came before."

"I think the role of the writer is to chronicle the times in which he lives."

"The complication in storytelling is that you can't avoid being yourself."

"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, into another's skin."

"I think of myself as a serious writer with a sense of humor."

"Writers want to be praised for their books, not for their bank accounts."

"The greatest thing about books is that they allow you to live multiple lives."

"A writer must avoid easy answers and comfortable truths."

"To be a writer is to be somewhat of a con artist."

"You can't write about life until you've lived it."

"Writing is thinking on paper."

"You write to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't."

"The unexamined life is not just unlivable, it's unwriteable."

"Nobody has ever disagreed with me that Melville is a great writer."

"Everything a writer writes is autobiographical in some way."

"Words are all we have; they are everything."

"The purpose of fiction is not to provide answers but to ask questions."

"A good book is a conversation between the writer and the reader."

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."