Sue Miller Quotes

When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

I love to read. And right now I'm on my last hundred pages of 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen, and I really enjoyed it. His writing is just - he's one of those writers where you just go, 'There are people just meant to be novel writers.'

William Kittredge's 'Hole in the Sky' is one of my favorite books. Ian Frazier's 'Family' I adore.

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

I like reading a lot. Jeffrey Archer and Robert Ludlum are my favourite authors. I love making realistic cinema, so I read non-fiction more.

Don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction. It's faux literary fiction I can't stand.

Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.

Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to the power of fiction when I was in my 20s.

I love Toni Morrison and Jeanette Winterson. 'The Passion' is my favourite book.

I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete.

Robert Bolt's storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to.

A book makes claims of literary art.

Early influences included Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Charles Baxter, Richard Ford, Alice Munro, Denis Johnson - writers who are important to me still and who I discovered through my teachers.

When I read interviews with people like Kevin Barry or Colin Barrett, who I hugely admire, they don't really seem to come up against the question of likeability even though their characters, in some instances, are really horrible.

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.

Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278 pages that approached perfection. Its tightness of construction and assuredness of style reminded me of 'The Great Gatsby.'

'Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere' took me six years to write.

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

I learnt to love reading. And then I started scribbling stories, and I liked that even more.

I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.

I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End of the Story,' not to blow my own horn.

I don't think any novelist should be concerned with literature.

Yes - 90% of fantasy is crap. And so is 90% of science fiction and 90% of mystery fiction and 90% of literary fiction.