Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

The original version of 'The White Mountains' was probably just about worth publishing.

Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough to fill their covers.

There's no literary merit in my books.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

When it's between the covers of a book, content is perceived to have literary substance - or more so that it might otherwise.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

A book may be compared to your neighbor: if it be good, it cannot last too long; if bad, you cannot get rid of it too early.

It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.

The bestseller charts, a sure indicator of public taste, tell us with relentless frequency that Marian Keyes or Jeffrey Archer is a better author, by some dizzying six-figure sum, both in numbers of copies and money, than, say, J. M. Coetzee or Patrick White. Are they right?

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.

But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.

All good Literature rests primarily on insight.

And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to prose.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

The book may be garbage, but if it weighs in at a kilo or more, I stand before its author in awe.

In 1935, Faber & Faber published an anthology entitled 'My Best Western Story' in which the genre's leading practitioners contributed what they considered their finest. Alas, literature the stories ain't; they appear more like fossils from a spent mine.

Most books are surplus to the world's requirements, and I am going to sound very conceited here, but I am trying to write books that aren't just using up trees.

There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction.

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

I don't think if you're serious about literature your library is filled with award-winning books.

Most literature everywhere and of every time is bad.

Readers who claim a preference for short-form over long often tell me it's because they don't have time to commit to a book-length chunk of writing.

Minor writers think style is all.

Most books are three-thirds rubbish.