Book Criticism Quotes

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there.

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.

A book must have moral purpose to be any good. Why, I don't know.

Ive read an awful lot of books, Ive read alot of awful books

The people that usually have the most trouble with my books are the ones that pick them apart from a theological point of view.

Like any other person who reads a ton of books, I hate many, many books. Oh, how I hate them. I have performed dramatic readings of the books I hate. I have little hate summaries. I have hate impressions. I can act out, scene by hateful scene, some of these books. I can perform silent hate charades.

This is the sort of book that justifies fatwahs. If WWIII occurred right now, we could die happy knowing Baxter would never write again. If a dinosaur killing asteroid was headed for Earth and I knew Baxter had another book coming up, I would campaign for letting the rock hit, since it is obviously the work of a benovelent deity trying to save us from another Titan.

Nowadays, I only review books I really like. It's cowardly, I know, but I figure it's not my job to make people unhappy. I'll leave that to the professionals.

Good books are irrefutable, and bad books refute themselves.

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

There's no literary merit in my books.

I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt.

I'm not very much of a reader really, because I find much of it very bad, very uninteresting, very speculative.

People who think I have insulted Ireland or Limerick or my family have not read the book!

I often don't read reviews.

It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.

The gender inequality in book reviewing isn't getting better. Male authors get the majority of review coverage, and male reviewers do most of the reviewing. It's kind of devastating.

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

I think the Harry books are actually very moral, but some people just object to witchcraft being mentioned in a children's book.

I picked up one of the books and flipped through it. Don't get me wrong, I like reading. But some books should come with warning labels: Caution: contains characters and plots guaranteed to induce sleepiness. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after ingesting more than one chapter. Has been known to cause blindness, seizures and a terminal loathing of literature. Should only be taken under the supervision of a highly trained English teacher. Preferably one who grades on the curve.

Few books today are forgivable.

There are, however, those who have called the book [The Kite Runner] divisive and objected to some of the issues raised in the book, namely racism, discrimination, ethnic inequality etc.

Hating a book is not unlike hating a person; in fact it's tempting to just go ahead and hate the author personally, by proxy, qua human being, except that I know that would be a mistake.