We properly judge a critic's virtue not by his freedom from error but by the nature of the mistakes he does make, for he makes them, if he is worth reading, because he has in mind something besides his perceptions about art in itself - he has in mind the demands that he makes upon life.
When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading.
The reason Saul Bellow doesn't talk to me anymore is because he knows his new novels are not worth reading.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
Books worth reading are worth re-reading.
The thing with newspapers is that they are a filter. We're relying on the editors of that paper to be a filter and to tell you that this is worth reading about, this is quality, and this is quite reliable.
I think sports makes for good drama because it has all the same ingredients as anything worth reading or listening to or watching. Conflict, desire, heartbreak - it's all there.
From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in the open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.
Jeremiah is a most melancholy prophet. He wails from beginning to end; he is often childish, is rarely indecent, and although it may be blasphemy to say so, he and his 'Lamentations' are really not worth reading.
Don't write for money. Write because you love to do something. If you write for money, you won't write anything worth reading.
The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.
The publishing industry, unsurprisingly, is full of different people who love different things and express that love in different languages. Find the people, the editors and agents, with whom you share some language, and some sense of what makes literature worth reading.
I was always taught that book keeping was more relevant than book reading. The only thing worth reading was meant to be a balance sheet.
Ultimately, the first, best step in getting your work noticed is to write good work. If people don't engage in your writing, no amount of serialization or free downloads is going to matter. You have to write something worth reading, and often it takes time to get at that level.
Most of the literary classics are worth reading, if you've nothing better to do.
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is, in a literary sense, the friend of everybody.
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
Whether my columns are worth reading isn't for me to say.
The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.
A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.
A book worth reading is worth buying.
