Blake Bailey Quotes

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

First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

The writer studies literature, not the world.

I'm not that well-versed in literary theory - I don't know what it is.

I write literary biographies, so above all, I have to love the subject's books. But choosing a subject is tough.

I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own.

I've had very close relationships with some twentieth-century writers.

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.

Russian literature got me interested in what literature means.

The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.

Hemingway's remarks are not literature.

Before college, I hadn't voluntarily read anything that might be called literature; I didn't think I'd understand it; I never seemed to understand my English teacher's interpretations of what we read.

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

I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.

The book I'm working on next, which will be my fifth, returns to literary history. I really do love literary history, and I have plenty more ideas on it.

As an undergraduate, I had not studied literature - I was a history major.

In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.

We had all these famous writers in Sweden and from all over the world home at dinner. I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be a highbrow writer as my father. He never, ever read anything like crime novels. He wrote biographies of Dante, James Joyce, August Strindberg and Joseph Conrad.

As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.

I'm always interested in contemporary fiction.

For fiction, I'm not particularly nationalistic. I'm not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.

My professional and human obsession is the nature of language, and my best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot better than I know my husband.

I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence.

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

I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States.