Ken Liu Quotes

Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story.

A trio of reputations lie at the heart of Henry James's 'The Portrait of a Lady.'

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

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.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

The best critics do not worry about what the author might think. That would be like a detective worrying about what a suspect might think. Instead, they treat the reader as an intelligent friend, and describe the book as honestly, and as entertainingly, as possible.

You're not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

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

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

Critics, at least generally, want to regard works of fiction as independent entities, whose virtues and failures must be reckoned apart from the circumstances of their creation, and even apart from the intentions of their creator.

I'm not going to get into the writer's skills or what he was trying to portray because that's not fair. I can only say what I felt was trying to be portrayed there.

Writers themselves benefit from all helpful information about their task and methods. Readers, in turn, can have both their understanding and appreciation of literature enhanced by information about the writer's work.

I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization.

Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections.

I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous.

Whoever utters 'Kafkaesque' has neither fathomed nor intuited nor felt the impress of Kafka's devisings. If there is one imperative that ought to accompany any biographical or critical approach, it is that Kafka is not to be mistaken for the Kafkaesque.

I have an editor in my head, that's why I can't read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.

For the critic, the author does not exist; only a certain number of writings exist.

The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.

A. S. Byatt is a writer in mid-career whose time has certainly come, because 'Possession' is a tour de force that opens every narrative device of English fiction to inspection without, for a moment, ceasing to delight.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

What does Sinclair know about anything? He's just a writer.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.