Phil Klay Quotes

'War and Peace' goes down a lot smoother than a Dan Brown novel, let me tell you.

When I was growing up, 'Anna Karenina' was one of my favourite books.

I only got 'War and Peace' on the third attempt.

I love 'Anna Karenina.' It's in the top five books on my list. Tolstoy is unsurpassed in combining the grand with the trivial, that is, the small details which make up life.

Any good writer is going to be well-received and is going to not be well-received; that's how you know you're a great writer.

I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.

We thought we'd write a good script for women, giving them the fun roles that generally men get.

When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'

No highbrow literary type would ever say 'Moby Dick' is good but it's just about a whale, or a Jane Austen would be important if she wasn't just writing about romantic relationships.

I went back to Australia to do a show called 'The Beautiful Lie,' which is a retelling of 'Anna Karenina' in a six-part mini-series - a modern, contemporary version.

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

The first book that really knocked me out was the 'Brothers Karamazov.' I read it when I was a senior in high school.

I have a job I'm pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive.

A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

As Indians, we take great pride in the fact that we are a progressive nation. We are proud of our democracy, our secular values as well as our entrepreneurial spirit. We are appalled by the harsh laws that govern women's lives in Taliban-dominated lands. Yet we turn a blind eye to the injustices that our own society continues to heap upon women.

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.

Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women, it is simply a good excuse not to play football.

The anger that appears to be building up between the sexes becomes more virulent with every day that passes. And far from women taking the blame... the fact is that men are invariably portrayed as the bad guys. Being a good man is like being a good Nazi.

A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

I have to admit that I only read 'War and Peace' when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then.

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.

We really didn't have any literature telling us it was a good thing to be a woman artist. When I was trained, there were no precedents, and that was something to get really angry about.