English Authors Quotes

'Finnegans Wake,' 'Alice and Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' live on my bedside table back home in London.

Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

She liked things that had been written by people who had lived short, ugly, and tragic lives. Or, who at least, were English.

I actually didn't like Jane Austen. I was more into the Brontes. They were so wild and passionate. I thought there was something a bit tame about Austen.

Among the English authors, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch the weak, superstitious part of his readers' imagination, and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius.

I love reading about the supernatural, and time-slip novels, and the mistress of both is Barbara Erskine.

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've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

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

You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.

Greece, sound, thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name, But England's Milton equals both in fame.

My go-to author for knowing it all is Evelyn Waugh. 'A Handful of Dust' is as perfect as a book can get.