Ivan Turgenev Quotes

Not a 'Mad Men' guy. Never got into it. I'm kind of a contrarian that way. If something gets too popular too fast before I can get on it, I just get really annoyed. Everybody tells me I'm an idiot; it's supposed to be amazing. I saw some of the second season; I loved it, but I was just detached. I didn't get into it.

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 never liked Jules Verne, believing that the real was always more fantastic than the fantastical.

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

If you like not my writing, go read something else.

I hated Hemingway. I liked Faulkner but he was a bore.

I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don't like. No other criterion exists for me.

I have hated every Kress I read, especially this one, but the Bear is a standard Bear and if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

I mostly eat peanut butter sandwiches. Peanut butter and banana, peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and potato chips, peanut butter and olives, and peanut butter and marshmallow goo. So sue me, I like peanut butter.

I didn't really like confessional poetry or things. They seemed sort of dated to me, or just corny.

Rice Krispies happens to be one of my favorite junk foods, just as I regard Michener as superior among junk writers.

In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." -- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors

Sydney had been horrified to discover my home library consisted of a bartending dictionary and an old copy of Esquire, and at her pleading, I'd promised to read something more substantial. I was trying to think deep thoughts as I read Gatsby, but mostly I wanted to throw some parties.

... the subjective viewpoint is the only one to use regarding a library. Your true library is a collection of the books you want.You may have deplorably poor taste or bad judgment. Never mind. Correct those traits before you exchange your books.

So every so often, when I meet someone who's honestly appalled by my books and doesn't understand why they would be attractive to people... I find such people sort of charming, even though they usually don't like me.

With no fact as a referent, what is normative is purely a matter of preference.

When I began to read as an adult, I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date. When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.

I was into Virginia Woolf and James Joyce [at university] and I think we all thought that [Charles] Dickens wasn't that cool.

Something we do know is that review coverage does go to male authors more than women authors. That's a fact. I think it's one of those examples of unconscious bias: If you hire a lot of male journalists, they're more likely to pick up the latest Ian McEwan novel than the latest A.S. Byatt novel.

What's fun for other people may not be fun for you- and vice versa.

I meet a lot of readers who first encountered my work in school. And I can only assume there is another group who would run away very fast if they saw me coming, for exactly the same reason. Reading is individual, and not all tastes are alike.

What if what you know isn’t what people want to hear?

I don't like to read nonfiction. To me, fact is something I can look up.