Tommy Lee Jones Quotes

Lincoln is a genius of language and a brilliant writer who deserves to be seen as part of the canon of great writers in American literature.

The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and common stones compared with Shakespeare's glittering gold and gleaming gems.

You don't have to be dead to write a classic, and you don't have to be literary to be smart.

There is only one school of literature - that of talent.

Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir!

Knut Hamsun's writing is magical. His sentences are glowing; he could write about anything and make it alive. Of contemporary writers, Thure Erik Lund is my definite favorite.

I think Bellow's the greatest American writer of his century, personally. When I read him, I'm in awe.

I think John le Carre is, at 77, the greatest living writer alive. He is a master craftsman.

The writers we tend to universally admire, like Beckett, or Kafka, or TS Eliot, are not very prolific.

Gore Vidal has been a friend of mine for years, and he's one of the greatest writers in American history.

A text may be superbly written, exquisitely subtle, deeply meaningful, but still seem like a luxury extra, something we add to the already well-stocked store of our reading experience.

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.

McCarthy's prose in 'Blood Meridian' comes blazing from the Book of Revelation.

Great writers probably shouldn't be ranked, at least not by me.

I love everything that Cormac McCarthy has written.

I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.

One of the great pleasures of reading Tom Wolfe - of still reading Tom Wolfe - is the sense of awe he consistently inspires.

Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn't want to shake hands with him.

If Shakespeare has not been equalled, he is sure to be surpassed, and surpassed by an American born now or yet to be born.

A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Readers want a good book; it's a writer's job to give it to them.

We loved the language in Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country,' which is really about the region, while in 'True Grit' it's more about period: people did speak more formally and floridly.

I'm a big admirer of Daniel Woodrell for his beautiful, precise, sparse prose - I don't do succinct well, so I'm in awe of writers who do.

There are writers who are great visionaries, who can depict huge movements - things like that. They're the great writers. I'm just the other kind.