Michael Dirda Quotes

Throughout my teenage years, I read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens every December. It was a story that never failed to excite me, for as well as being a Dickens enthusiast, I have always loved ghost stories.

I read mostly fiction, a lot of 19th-century novels.

Late summer is perfect for classic mysteries - think of Raymond Chandler's hot Santa Anas and Agatha Christie's Mediterranean resorts - while big ambitious works of nonfiction are best approached in September and early October, when we still feel energetic and the grass no longer needs to be cut.

I tend not to read fiction - I'll read one novel a year during the summer - but I do read a lot of nonfiction.

I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language.

My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written.

When I was a kid, I went through the whole process of reading great literature and trying to be very widely read.

I love to read. I was in AP English in high school, and we were assigned books every few months. 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' are two of my favorite ones.

I like reading... French, Russian classics - Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert. I also like Hemingway, Virginia Woolf.

I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.

I am sometimes asked to name my favourite books. The list changes, depending on my mood, the year, tricks played by memory. I might mention novels by Nabokov and Calvino and Tolkien on one occasion, by Fitzgerald and Baldwin and E.B. White on another. Camus often features, as do Tolstoy, Borges, Morrison and Manto.

I do read a lot, and I think in recent years the ratio between the amount of non-fiction and fiction has tipped quite considerably. I did read fiction as a teenager as well, mostly because I was forced to read fiction, of course, to go through high school.

I read a lot when I'm away. I love courtroom dramas and I'm always looking for new authors.

I don't read 'chick lit,' fantasy or science fiction but I'll give any book a chance if it's lying there and I've got half an hour to kill.

I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing' was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist in Peter Hatcher. When I reached the fourth grade, I made the leap to science fiction and never looked back.

I've always loved books by the Bronte sisters. I love Jane Austen, too. I'm more influenced by people like her than by pop culture.

I don't read fiction at all.

If I'm desperate, I'll read anything. But even when I can be choosy, I still have no hard-and-fast rules. I have rules about what I won't read, rather than what I will. No science fiction, no romance, no chick lit. Although even these rules can be broken.

The magical and fantastical isn't something I'm uncomfortable with in books, and I chafe slightly at the idea that a purely realist novel somehow has more value.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

I don't think I've ever read an old book through from start to finish. Not after more than six months after writing it, that is.

I was a big reader as a child. My father is a great book lover and a librarian, but he forbid me to read bad literature. I was not allowed to read Nancy Drew or books like that. I often say to him that me becoming a crime author is both a way of pleasing him and annoying him.

I read a lot - and I read a variety of genres.

I didn't read comic books, growing up. I was more of a science fiction/fantasy novel guy. I loved reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Tarzan' and that kind of stuff.

I'm a bit more of a suspense reader on the adult side, but my favorites were the ones I grew up reading.