Charles Murray Quotes

I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer.

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much about them. I do read them, and I do care about them, and they're not always what you want them to be in an ideal world.

When we read about reading, we get to share an experience that is usually kept private. Incisive descriptions of reading help us to understand what is going on when our eyes move across words on the page.

We take literature too seriously.

Confusing the author and the character seems to be a popular and rather unsophisticated reaction to books.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.

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.

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

As society diversifies, the number of people who read literature is decreasing. It will be difficult for readers to digest my ideas through literature.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.

We can make fun of hockey fans, but someone who enjoys Homer is indulging the same kind of vicarious bloodlust.

A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.

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

Poetry always runs away from you - it's very difficult to grasp it, and every time you read it, depending on your conditions, you will have a different grasp of it. Whereas with a novel, once you have read it, you have grasped it.

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

Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases.

Don't go around asking the question, 'Is this character likeable?' and expect that to be compatible with serious literary endeavours. That's not what it's about.

Attending a book group is always a salutary experience for a writer. There's no guarantee that the people there will have enjoyed your book, and, as anyone who has taken part in a book group will know, half the fun is in ripping a book you haven't liked to shreds.

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.