Literature Review Quotes

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.

Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information is control.

All analysts spend half their time hunting through the literature for inequalities which they want to use and cannot prove.

Research is a lifelong occupation so it's hard to factor it in, but I reckon most books take 5 months from start to finish.

Research, research, research. It means everything.

The research. It is always the best part of writing. And, of course, it is the great excuse to travel.

I'm a big skeptic so I won't just go off what an individual may tell me. I gotta do the research. I'ma get different literature on that one subject and just compare and contrast. I do my own selective studies.

Because he did not have time to read every new book in his field, the great Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski used a simple and efficient method of deciding which ones were worth his attention: Upon receiving a new book, he immediately checked the index to see if his name was cited, and how often. The more "Malinowski" the more compelling the book. No "Malinowski", and he doubted the subject of the book was anthropology at all.

I'm not writing a Ph.D. Dissertation.

Footnotes are the finer-suckered surfaces that allow testicular paragraphs to hold fast to the wider reality of the library.

I applied for funding to embark on an overseas field trip in Iceland, and spent six weeks there happily holed up in the national archives, museums and libraries, sifting through ministerial and parish records, censuses, maps, microfilm, logs, and local histories.

I use all kinds of resources for researching my novels. I'm not shy about calling up experts and asking questions, or emailing, or buying textbooks and references. The Internet is always a brilliant way to find instant facts, but it's not a great way to really understand your subjects in depth without a lot of work.

The initial research will be very indiscriminate. I do a lot of reading, buy a stack of books and read and digest them, and then I start doing phone interviews and archival research and then the travelling.

Mostly, research is much more fun than the actual writing.

Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

Rather big part of my time is to read scientific journals and to discover what others are doing.

I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.

The literature of science is filled with answers found when the question propounded had an entirely different direction and end.

During our stay in London for the first time I was able to establish personal contact with some of the organic chemists, whose work I knew and admired from the literature. I found them most gracious and helpful.