There's that unwritten schism that literary writers get all the awards and commericals writers get all the success.
The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.
A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.
Science fiction is a literary field crowded with strong opinions, and no SF novelist delivered himself more memorably of his views - on politics, sexuality, religion, and many other contentious topics - than Robert Heinlein.
I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.
The literary culture, if you examine it, the high literary culture is that which preserves the government and you know it's really the talk for those who have.
Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either.
Any biographer must of necessity become a pilgrim a peripatetic, obsessed literary pilgrim, a traveler with four eyes.
If any imagine from the literary tone of the preceding remarks that we are indifferent to the radical movement for the benefit of the masses which is the crowning glory of the nineteenth century, they will soon discover their egregious mistake.
I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.
We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young writer, and I was also interested in broad cultural issues. We agreed on all major issues and became friends.
The intercourse between the Mediterranean and the North or between the Atlantic and Central Europe was never purely economic or political; it also meant the exchange of knowledge and ideas and the influence of social institutions and artistic and literary forms.
Complex astronomical instruments like the Antikythera Mechanism and the Nebra Sky Disk were made by Pagans. Our Pagan intellectual heritage includes poets and scientists and literary intellectuals of every kind, especially including those who wrote some of the most important and influential books in all of Western history.
I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '
I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to school because I felt gaps in my literary background. I studied mostly twentieth-century English literature in college, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll go back for my writing.'
I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British, and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan.
Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.
Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.
I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself.
I really enjoyed reading 'The Da Vinci Code,' but from a literary standpoint, the book did not live up to the hype.
Let's get right to it: On page 5 of Paul Murray's dazzling new novel, 'Skippy Dies,'... Skippy dies. If killing your protagonist with more than 600 pages to go sounds audacious, it's nothing compared with the literary feats Murray pulls off in this hilarious, moving and wise book.
White writers in many cases choose not to populate their fiction with people of color. A lot of what I'm doing is trying to write against that, not about race but against the avoidance of race that's such a dominant model in white literary discourse.
I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.
I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.
I have no literary fears.
I had definitely missed the literary development game with Paper Lantern Lit, and writing exclusively wasn't giving me complete fulfillment.
To discuss a Martin Amis book, you must first discuss the orchestrated release of a Martin Amis book. In London, which rightly prides itself on the vibrancy of its literary cottage industry, Amis is the Steve Jobs of book promoters, and his product rollouts are as carefully managed as anything Apple dreams up.
I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.
Jacques Derrida is a very important thinker and philosopher who has made serious contributions to both philosophy and literary criticism. Roland Barthes is the one I feel most affinity for, and Michel Foucault, well, his writing influenced my novel, 'Middlesex.'
I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had - I don't know what - the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way, perhaps. That's what I think writers are for.
But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.
We now open our mail with gloves and mask, though I can't imagine why anyone would target a literary agency!
To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
I'm sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can't be literary.
As I said earlier, there are no writers who could create a literary vision of the new reality.
I think I became less literary after I sold more!
