Amitava Kumar Quotes

Hemingway's remarks are not literature.

If people aren't creating literature, there would be nothing for people to criticize.

I take literature as a really serious human activity. It's not just a playful thing. It can be hilarious and wonderful and performative, but I think it's really serious.

That complete statement which is literature.

I thought it was a glorious thing to be a critic and to be a literary editor, and one was really doing something that mattered: to keep up standards, to take books seriously.

I don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.

In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.

Literature is news that stays news.

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

It is easy to criticize an author, but difficult to appreciate him.

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.

I have no doubt that 'On the Road' is a Great American Novel. But I'm also certain my students will do fine without it.

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Sometimes novels are considered 'important' in the way medicine is - they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat, but are good for you.

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter.

I'm not an academic; I'm just a bookish Joe who gets passionate about certain writers and suddenly wants to read everything they've ever written and find out why they wrote it.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

I see 'Eligible' as a homage, and I see 'Pride and Prejudice' as a perfect book. You can dispute whether this project is a good idea, but you can't dispute my fondness for the novel.

It's hard to judge literary merit.