Ben Jonson Quotes

They were like English teachers who took the fun out of a perfectly good book by breaking it down into themes and sentence structures

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.

An active and creative reader is a re-reader.

There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

What I am best at is reading a book and then writing a critical essay.

To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.

I'm not sure at all that literature should be studied on the university level. ... Why should people study books? Isn't it rather silly to study Pride and Prejudice. Either you get it or you don't.

A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response.

It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.

I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.

In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.

This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.

There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.

If we want a book to do more than what it does, that's a condemnation. If we want it to do more of what it does, that's an endorsement.

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

A book is made better by good readers and clearer by good opponents.

You can't ever approach a book as a complete virgin, certainly not if you're a critic. There is a lot of bad faith out there. That's why I finally trained myself not to look at this stuff anymore, because it doesn't do me any good to see myself either praised or attacked.

In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.

You can't expect that, after a poor fellow has written a book, he should also understand it.

When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

I hate the idea that you ought to read the whole of anybody.