Conrad Aiken Quotes

Literature has become my life.

Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing.

I thought that if one wanted to be a writer, one had to write novels because I didn't know that one could be a poet.

Literature precedes genre.

What I enjoy about reviewing and writing for newspapers and periodicals is simply the chance to talk about all kinds of books and lots of them.

I have a huge passion for literature.

I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.

The fun one can have writing books about books is limitless, to be honest.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

I have a slightly bad back, which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.

Writers themselves benefit from all helpful information about their task and methods. Readers, in turn, can have both their understanding and appreciation of literature enhanced by information about the writer's work.

One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I find this, however, far from being the case.

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.

I tend to boycott all teenage reading while I'm trying to write my own stuff.

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose.

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'll read anything Anne Carson writes, anything J. M. Coetzee writes, and anything Cormac McCarthy writes. I'll drop whatever I'm doing to read a new Mary Ruefle essay.

I have no very sophisticated understanding of literary forms. Short stories are shorter than novels, and poems are typically shorter than either, though not always.

It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't.

I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate students. It seems almost uncivilized to tell someone writing a novel, 'No, you have to call this a memoir.'

What I realized is that my interest in literature has more deeply structured my practice than I thought.

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

I'm really into short-story collections and essays; they're my jam.

This Is Not a Novel memorializes the treasures and detritus of one man's singularly cultured mind. (...) If you don't know Writer's work at all, try This Is Not a Novel. There may be some doubt about exactly what kind of book it is, but not that it's altogether wonderful.

I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.