Literary Classic Quotes

'Floating Worlds,' which received a fair amount of attention when it was first published, deserves rediscovery.

You know what that big number was? It was 1957. It's not the year I was born. I'm a little older than that. I wish it was the year I was born. It was the year one of my favorite books was written: 'Atlas Shrugged.' Ayn Rand.

I was still in college when 'To Kill a Mockingbird' came out in 1960. I remember it had a kind of an electrifying effect on this country; this was a time when there were a lot of good books coming out.

When I first read 'Lord of the Rings,' I wanted to see a film of it. But at that time, the technology wasn't there; there was no such thing as CGI.

Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.

How stupid do you have to be to imagine that you can turn 'The Lord Of The Rings' into a film script?

In America, people of a certain age ask, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' In my house you were more likely to be asked, 'Where were you when you first read 'The Catcher In The Rye?'

One novel that I think is an overriding influence in my life is 'All the King's Men,' the most beautiful book written in the U.S.

'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.

I read "Pride and Prejudice" [by Jane Austen]. I was gobsmacked by it - it's so funny and so modern. Unbelievable. You don't expect funny to come through after 200 years - humor doesn't transcend decades, let alone centuries.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Yeah, I think A Confederacy of Dunces is probably the perfect New Orleans book.

It came right on the heels of A Room With A View. And that was such an enormous success, so I think people were hoping that Maurice would also have that kind of success.

'Macbeth' was a very lucky play for me.

The Great Gatsby' [...] was my 'Tom Sawyer' when I was twelve [....]

'The Golden Compass' became a bad experience because the studio didn't have faith in the strength of the ideas of the novel, which is ironic because it's one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written, if not the greatest, and they took the religion out of it and tried to turn it into a popcorn movie.

To encounter 'Beowulf' is like taking a sledgehammer to a quarry face. You must bang in there.

Reading it now for the seventh or eighth time, I am more convinced than ever not merely that The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s masterwork but that it is the American masterwork, the finest work of fiction by any of this country’s writers.

I have finished To Kill a Mockingbird. It is now my favorite book of all time, but then again, I always think that until I read another book.

The original 'Hobbit' was never intended to have a sequel - Bilbo 'remained very happy to the end of his days and those were extraordinarily long': a sentence I find an almost insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory link.

'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell' by Susanna Clarke is a big, thick book. About a thousand pages in paperback. I've heard several people say the size alone intimidated them.

The Princess Bride S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure You had to admire a guy who called his own new book a classic before it was published and anyone had a chance to read it.

The book that made me decide to go into Russian literature was 'Anna Karenina,' which I first read in high school. The thing that appealed to me and constituted its Russianness for me was that it was simultaneously incredibly funny and sad.

Read Don Quixote; it is a very good book; I still read it frequently.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.