Impactful Literature Quotes

I went to the library and began to read some stuff on my own. My discovery of James Baldwin was life-changing. I read Go Tell It on the Mountain first, and that was hugely impactful.

I don't use the word lightly, in fact, I don't use it at all, but Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world. His prose is, for me, awareness objectified-he makes the word new and thus the world.

I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

What I find cool about being a banned author is this: I'm writing books that evoke a reaction, books that, if dropped in a lake, go down not with a whimper but a splash.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

They belong to their readers now, which is a great thing–because the books are more powerful in the hands of my readers than they could ever be in my hands.

I receive emails from readers that both break my heart and give me a profound sense of connection. Several months ago, I received an email from a teacher who told me that 'Legend' was the first book one of her troubled young students had ever read to the end. He cried when he finished it. Stories like that stay with you forever.

I can't pick out one single book that had such a profound personal impact.

Maybe I have a one-track mind, but the best writers and thinkers are focusing on nonfiction these days; this is the genre where a writer can make a mark and change an aspect of the world - much more so than in fiction.

One of the true pleasures of my life has been the work of John Steinbeck. He was one of the people who turned my life around. I had no direct relationship with him, unfortunately.

A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers.

A good book is an event in my life.

I felt the weakness of these books, their immateriality, how they had failed to change the world, and I didn't want to sully myself with their weakness anymore.

Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called.