Penelope Lively Quotes

I do, however, think it would be difficult to write books I don't like to read.

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure.

I didn't really like reading much before I did 'The Golden Compass'. But then my teacher told me to read it. And I thought, 'Oh God, I'm going to have to read a whole book by myself!' It's not that I couldn't read, it's just that I didn't really like books very much. But the book that she lent me I really enjoyed.

I have so many favorite authors; I can't name just one.

I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories.

As an undergraduate, I took two writing workshops taught by Elizabeth Hardwick. She was certainly a major influence, though more as a writer I greatly admired than as a teacher. As for other writers, I think it's safe to say that my work has been and continues to be influenced to one degree or another by every writer whose work I love and admire.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

No, I had not read any other comedian's book. Not that I don't enjoy other comedians; I'm just not a reader.

To become a novelist, the most crucial thing one must do is read, read and read again - gradually you begin to think like a writer. Ideas are not found - they are shaped.

It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose.

I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can't find the time, there are people who've never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous.

I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.

I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.

My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.

I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.

I think most people read and re-read the things that they have liked. That's certainly true in my case. I re-read Pound a great deal, I re-read Williams, I re-read Thomas, I re-read the people whom I cam to love when I was at what you might call a formative stage.

Interviewing Hugh McIlvanney, I got to read lots of his stuff again. I'm a big fan of his writing.

Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

All attempts at gaining literary polish must begin with judicious reading, and the learner must never cease to hold this phase uppermost. In many cases, the usage of good authors will be found a more effective guide than any amount of precept.

I read all the time, and I'm often struck by something I'm reading.

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.