Philip Kitcher Quotes

I'm working now on a collection of Shakespearean sonnets, about 100 of them, that I may publish if anyone's interested. My take on life is a little different from the bard's.

Critics, at least generally, want to regard works of fiction as independent entities, whose virtues and failures must be reckoned apart from the circumstances of their creation, and even apart from the intentions of their creator.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.

That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

Critics who perceive the first level of Mann's irony recognize that the second voice is giving us reasons to be dubious about various aspects of Aschenbach's life and work. But many of them don't appreciate the second level of irony, the one exemplified in setting this narrative voice alongside the more sympathetic one, and inviting us to choose.

I'm constantly intimidated by Shakespeare's work. Trying to decipher what he's saying and holding on to that thought - not just as an actor, but as a human being - is a rigour.

Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is the Night,' an experimental novel.

If we took Chaucer's writings at face value, we'd have to conclude he was a complete drip.

What's wonderful about Tolkien and Shakespeare is that they show up your own individual microscope. They're so infinitely vast. You can reinterpret them in so many ways.

I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.

Some things in literature are inexplicable.

Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realizing that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract painting. People bring their own beliefs and attitudes to your work, which is thrilling and surprising at the same time.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

A critic is a legless man who teaches running.

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.

Whoever utters 'Kafkaesque' has neither fathomed nor intuited nor felt the impress of Kafka's devisings. If there is one imperative that ought to accompany any biographical or critical approach, it is that Kafka is not to be mistaken for the Kafkaesque.

With Shakespeare, the hard work is to find out why he said it and how it can relate to the audience.

I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.

The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.