E. M. Forster Quotes

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

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

It's not even my job to educate, but what I do is try to facilitate by creating a book that works on different levels. I do want to entertain and bring some joy to the reading experience. If it holds a little kernel of knowledge that readers choose to explore, well, that's great.

Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment.

Suppose you like someone very much. Then, by a familiar halo effect, you will also be prone to believe many good things about that person - you will be biased in their favor. Most of us like ourselves very much, and that suffices to explain self-assessments that are biased in a particular direction.

Sometimes a book is better than it ever had a right to be because of the history the reader brings to the reading and because of the methods educators use to bring a particular story alive.

You know when someone's over-flattering you in a way. You smile but you can't believe it.

There is something about inside information which seems to paralyse a man's reasoning powers.

Got an hour or two? That's all it takes for one of my books.

I was reading Plato's 'The Republic' at age 18, and I can't account fully the electricity that had for me.

You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

A person himself believes that all the other portraits are good likenesses except the one of himself.

A reviewer's lot is not always an easy one. I can remember flogging myself to finish Harold Brodkey's 'The Runaway Soul' despite the novel's consummate, unmitigated tedium.

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies say about him.

I sort of try to read the books when they come out impartially and not make up my mind, but the fact is when I was reading the sixth, 'Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince', there were bits in there where I was going, 'God, I would love to do that because it's so good'.

The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision.

I think a book that is over 400 pages should be split in two. I don't know that there's anything that interesting that can go on for 700 pages. I think that is a little bit indulgent.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over.

Everybody thinks that an important book has to be a big, long book.

To the Tennis Court and there saw the King play at Tennis, and others; but to see how the King’s play was extolled without any cause at all was a loathsome sight, though sometimes indeed he did play very well and deserved to be commended; but such open flattery is beastly.

'A People's History of the United States' was actually a very big book for me. I read it in high school, and I felt like my mind was really blown by it. I think the truth is I read it because it's referenced in 'Good Will Hunting.'

A lot of praise is given to very mediocre work. Critics have lost their taste, hearing, and eyesight.

If you don't want to investigate what you're passing judgment on, then it's your fault. And I believe that if people investigate Goldberg as a human being, I'm not such a bad guy.

It's a very powerful, emotional thing to read a book, and to reduce it to a series of questions in a test strips something away from the book.