Literary Excellence Quotes

Rick Bass is one of the best writers of his generation.

Shakespeare is the best writing ever. It's incredibly rich, dense, expressive language.

'Olive Kitteridge' is a masterpiece: The writing is so perfect you don't even notice it; the story is so vivid it's less like reading a story than experiencing it firsthand.

Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose.

I always want to write something better than the last book.

A good writer knows that if her style and perceptions are really cooking, she can bring anything off. It's okay, of course, for novelists to depict bland, average families living bland, average lives in bland, average towns. But it isn't okay when those novelists don't outshine their bland, average subjects.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.

Dan Gerber is one of our finest living poets.

On a court full of great writers, I shouldn't say full of - there have been some bad writers on the court over the years.

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.

Janice Gould is one of our best poets. The music of her poetry will delight you, and her gentle courageous accounts of tribal, family, and personal history make this book unforgettable. Doubters and Dreamers is a master-piece.

Do not read good books-life is too short for that-read only the best.

Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.

It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.

Poets are never allowed to be mediocre by the gods, by men or by publishers.

Envy depreciates the genius of the great Homer.

I'd like my writing to be recognized with a Grammy.

It doesn't matter what kind of book you write - you ought to write it well and with some kind of style and elegance.

What a thrill it is to have my writing recognized by an institution as admirable and vital as the National Endowment for the Arts.

When I was young my Father used to tell me that the two most worthwhile pursuits in life were the pursuit of truth and of beauty and I believe that Alfred Nobel must have felt much the same when he gave these prizes for literature and the sciences.

Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.