David McCullough Quotes

I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.

I'd somehow always thought of the classics of literature as something apart from me, something to do with academic life and not something you enjoyed.

I want to read Keats and Wordsworth, Hemingway, George Orwell.

Some writers you return to again and again, and for me, Nancy Mitford is one of them.

I had, in college, a professor called Walter Jackson Bate, and he taught a course called The Age of Johnson. It's about Samuel Johnson and his period, 18th-century British writing. So we all got to endure Samuel Johnson, and Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' is now my favorite book. I read it all the time I can; it's great for going to sleep.

All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.

Of the authors writing in English, I'd mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I'm afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.

I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

I read everything by Ian McEwan, he is so elegant. I love reading anything about Shakespeare, too. He is my first love. If I had a time machine, I would be hanging out with him.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

The last romantic novel I think I read was 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles.'

I enjoyed reading all the classic authors like Isaac Asimov and Bradbury.

Like everybody at that age, I read an awful lot of pulp fiction. But at the same time, I also read quite a bit of history and read that as much for pleasure as part of a curriculum.

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.

Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.

There might be children in Somalia or the Arctic who have never heard of 'Hamlet' or the 'Great Gatsby.' But you can bet they know 'Tarzan.'

I've always liked authors such as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury.

I'm an old-fashioned English lit. man. Straight down the line - it's George Eliot, it's Dickens, it's Dr. Johnson, it's Jane Austen.

I read one Jane Austen in college and didn't like it at all and told everyone how much I disliked it. I read 'Northanger Abbey' sophomore year in college and hated it. I didn't read good Austen until after college, maybe a couple years out.

Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Proust - not exactly authors one expects to whiz through or take lightly, but like all works of genius, they are meant to be read out loud and loved.

I think Jane Austen is like Shakespeare, in a slightly different way. I think people will continue to revisit these stories because they remain relevant, regardless of how you do them.

Jane Austen is one of my all-time favourites.

I love books that stand the test of time.

I'm guilty of it myself, sort of thinking, 'Classic novels: snoozeville.' But there is a huge amount of wonderful material.