Miriam Margolyes Quotes

Before college, I hadn't voluntarily read anything that might be called literature; I didn't think I'd understand it; I never seemed to understand my English teacher's interpretations of what we read.

As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

The writer studies literature, not the world.

The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.

I'm not that well-versed in literary theory - I don't know what it is.

We had all these famous writers in Sweden and from all over the world home at dinner. I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be a highbrow writer as my father. He never, ever read anything like crime novels. He wrote biographies of Dante, James Joyce, August Strindberg and Joseph Conrad.

I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own.

My master's degree was in English literature.

I wish I had read more and majored in literature rather than theatre. I think I would have been a better artist for it. I am trying to play catch-up now.

I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States.

I did modern English and American literature at Kent University, with no Chaucer and no Middle English: a perfect course.

I'm using my degree. You know, I studied English and American literature in college, and now I'm an American poet.

I'm not an academic; I'm just a bookish Joe who gets passionate about certain writers and suddenly wants to read everything they've ever written and find out why they wrote it.

As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.

If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

We've been hearing about the death of the novel ever since the day after Don Quixote was published.

In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.

It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great services that he conceived so clearly the truth that literature is a thing that grows and has a history.

I think literary theory has not been terribly good for English studies in a while. It's not that theory isn't interesting, but it isn't about books, or the idiosyncrasies and complexities of putting language together.

You become a reader by reading the literature, not by reading the handbooks about it.

My number-one website is brainpickings.org. It opens you up to different authors and gives insights into the literary world. Reading about the love letters novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote to his wife Vera blew my mind. Fascinating.

I grew up reading a lot on literature and all of that.

I had read Harold Bloom's 'Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?' Late in his life, having read everything, Bloom asked which books had given him wisdom. I had just read a bunch of contemporary novels that had no wisdom for me.

My mother, with a Master's in English Literature, taught me to appreciate language and that words matter.