John Boyne Quotes

The truly great books are always novels: 'Anna Karenina,' 'The Brothers Karamazov,' 'The Magic Mountain.' Just as with 'Shahnameh,' I browse these books from time to time to remember how a great book works on us or to teach my students at Columbia University.

For someone who loves literature, and all books on principle, being asked to name three titles over a half century of serious reading is akin to asking one to recall their three favorite sunsets.

Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life.

When I was a kid, I went through the whole process of reading great literature and trying to be very widely read.

It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.

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.

I'm not very much of a reader really, because I find much of it very bad, very uninteresting, very speculative.

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.

No one ever knows if a book is good until they read the book.

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.

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

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

Most literature everywhere and of every time is bad.

I'm an enormous fan of American literature, and especially the great novels of Larry McMurtry, 'Lonesome Dove,' Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard.

Most books are three-thirds rubbish.

The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can't, it might not be your inadequacy that's to blame. 'Good' books can be pretty awful sometimes.

I might defend the reviewing trade, but a handful of haughty hired hands no longer having the last word on books is not a bad thing.

I never show my books to Ricky. His writing is very different, and anyway, he's only read one novel in his life: 'The Catcher in the Rye.'

I've been told there's a special golden shelf, in the secret vault kept at the back of every bookstore in America, that contains the Bible, 'War and Peace,' and 'Driving Mr. Albert.'

Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly.

That's what people expect: They don't want to read a slight novel. People don't want to waste their time on anything less than 'great.'

Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.

A great book should leave you with many experiences.

If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.

I never read Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier." I've been reading books that I should have read years ago and did not. That's one of them.