Tucker Max Quotes

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

Gore Vidal was a man of immense literary talent, some of which he used well, some of which he wasted.

Saul Bellow never took my advice when he was my friend.

It may be that Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf were sitting around fretting about their Amazon reviews or their pre-pub whatever, but I kind of doubt it. I don't think that's how the work probably got made.

Every writer secretly hopes that what he or she has written will endure.

I don't aspire at present to be king of the hill in American literature.

It's almost uncanny to receive a prize named in honor of Bernard Malamud. I must have been in my early teens when 'The Magic Barrel' was published and I first read it.

I think that with Bob Dylan around, we're living in an era where we have Whitman presenting new work, we have Dickens presenting new work, we have Yeats and Shakespeare presenting new work. It's that level.

Whenever anyone calls me 'The new J..K. Rowling,' I think, 'What's wrong with the old one?'

Gore Vidal has been a friend of mine for years, and he's one of the greatest writers in American history.

Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir!

I actually thought I wanted to be Thomas Wolfe, but I didn't have the talent. So I thought I could edit Thomas Wolfe.

One of the great pleasures of reading Tom Wolfe - of still reading Tom Wolfe - is the sense of awe he consistently inspires.

A few of Ellison's short stories from the 1940s and 1950s were widely anthologized over the years. After a while, it became generally known that he was at work on another novel. Though he remained aware ever afterward of the authority 'Invisible Man' gave to him, no second novel followed his brilliant debut in 1952.

J. K. Rowling is one of my favourite authors, and I really admire how she created this big wizarding world. But I think our books are very, very different, and I don't think there can be a next J. K. Rowling. She is one of a kind.

How wonderful it was to sit on a set with Norman Mailer and get to know him.

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

The writers we tend to universally admire, like Beckett, or Kafka, or TS Eliot, are not very prolific.

When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'

Alice Munro is not only revered, she is cherished, her stories handled lovingly, turned over and over, gazed at and studied and breathed in with something approaching awe. She has never, over the years, written the way any of her contemporaries have.

The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and common stones compared with Shakespeare's glittering gold and gleaming gems.

Any writer my age almost can't get away from being influenced by Kurt Vonnegut, partially because of his simple, clear way of stating things. To read Vonnegut is to learn how to use economy words.

I've tried not to treat Shakespeare as a marble giant.

I was the Colleen McCullough of 1971.

V. S. Pritchett was one of the most admired, fun, talked-about writers of the 20th century: he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work with prose. He was born in 1900, wrote till he died in 1997, and has been tidily forgotten ever since. This is a real shame.