Jill Paton Walsh Quotes

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.

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.

The two most common charges against the older fiction, that it pleased wickedly and that it taught nothing, had broken down before the discovery, except in illiberal sects, that the novel is fitted both for honest use and for pleasure.

What surprised me about 'The Casual Vacancy' was not just how good it was, but the particular way in which it was good.

Sometimes novels are considered 'important' in the way medicine is - they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat, but are good for you.

There are things I read doing research, and there are certain books and writers I just love to read. There are books of Brian Morten's that I love, for instance. There's a wonderful book by an Australian writer named Helen Garner called 'The Children's Bach,' and I just love the way she uses language in it.

Tolkien is as good as Dickens at sketching a scene.

Literary fiction - if we must use the term - is not the plotless, meandering indulgence that its detractors would have you believe.

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

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

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

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

If you were placing bets on which author would write the tenderest, most moving book about fatherhood, Philip Roth would probably come in at the bottom of the list.

A book makes claims of literary art.

Good books are irrefutable, and bad books refute themselves.

I'm not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It's about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years.

Real novelists, those we admire, those we consider timeless in their language and character and scene, those who receive accolades for inventive language and form, have writing lives we imagine in specific ways.

What does Sinclair know about anything? He's just a writer.

Your failure to enjoy a highly rated novel doesn't mean you're dim - you may find that Graham Greene is more to your taste, or Stephen Hawking or Iris Murdoch or Ian Rankin. Dickens, Stephen King, whoever.

I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.

In 'Min Kamp,' I wanted to see how far it was possible to take realism before it would be impossible to read.

I see 'Eligible' as a homage, and I see 'Pride and Prejudice' as a perfect book. You can dispute whether this project is a good idea, but you can't dispute my fondness for the novel.

One of the reasons it is considered such a privilege to sit on a Man Booker jury is because it is famously rigorous. The judging is not a gig for lightweights. Not only are all five judges expected to have read all 155 books from beginning to end, but they have to be able to talk fluently about every book at length.

I'm not really a mainstream novelist!

It's hard to judge literary merit.