Stephen Dobyns Quotes

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

My wife read Narc as well and was really into it.

I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situations left standing.

If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.

I grew up reading 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Pride and Prejudice' - girly kind of books.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'

When I read 'Room,' I absolutely loved it, and I thought I knew how to make it.

Linda Svendsen's 'Marine Life' was important. I was nearly 22. Larry Mathews discussed the book in a creative writing class. We examined her stories, figured out how they worked.

I would love to love Saul Bellow, but by page fifty of 'Herzog', something within me has wandered into another room.

I get scripts and think, 'There's not enough here to get my teeth stuck into.' That's a result of studying English, where you luxuriate in these big, lush novels.

I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them.

I mainly read histories and biographies, but I'm also a big fan of Graham Swift and Thomas Hardy.

'The Crimson Petal and the White' is a book, and it will win or lose the trust of each reader when they begin reading its pages. That relationship will go on.

I think the reason I'm a writer is because first, I was a reader. I loved to read. I read a lot of adventure stories and mystery books, and I have wonderful memories of my mom reading picture books aloud to me. I learned that words are powerful.

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

I was an English-literature major, and that's all about stories and narratives.

I've never managed to get very far with Henry James.

It's always fun to talk about a novel.

I recently read a collection of stories called 'Boondock Kollage,' by Regina Bradley. The stories follow multiple characters through the South, through the past and present. I loved reading that book: the first time I read the opening story, I was breathless and incoherent.

I've always loved Jane Austen's writing.

I read one Jane Austen in college and didn't like it at all and told everyone how much I disliked it. I read 'Northanger Abbey' sophomore year in college and hated it. I didn't read good Austen until after college, maybe a couple years out.

People often talk about the characters in books as if they were considering whom to invite to a dinner party. 'Oh, I just hated her - she was so mean.' 'He's a bully; I didn't like how he treated his mother.'

'MotherFatherSon' was just an extraordinary read and I wanted to be a part of it.

Any question about narrative storytelling is answered by Dickens.

I grew up on Jane Austen novels and was a massive literature fanatic when I was a kid - I read everything I could get my hands on.