Samuel Rogers Quotes

When a new book appears one should read an old one.

There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one. As as author I would not recommend too strict an adherence to this saying.

I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.

People like to complain about the state of contemporary literature, but I can only assume they don't read it very widely.

I thought it was a glorious thing to be a critic and to be a literary editor, and one was really doing something that mattered: to keep up standards, to take books seriously.

For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.

Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.

You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

I have spent more time with other people's books than with my own. I do not regret it.

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

When someone says to me, 'I love your book - I read it in a day,' I want to tell them to go back and read it again.

Being a writer in Iceland, you get rewarded all the time: People really do read our books, and they have opinions; they love them, or they hate them. At the average Christmas party, people push politics and the Kardashians aside and discuss literature.

I used to just sit down and read the dictionary, and I read the Bible and Shakespeare from cover to cover.

Writing in India will not dramatically change till we learn to value books.

In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.

A few times a year I'll remember that I love old literature, too. Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" is one of my 10 favorite books. I have to go out of my way to remember to pick up a book like that, but when I do I'm blown away by how very relevant it still is.

I'm a huge fan of 'The Lost Weekend.' I have this dog-eared copy of the 1963 Time Reading Program edition, which was a series of contemporary classics reprinted as a quality paperback.

I never read articles about my books.

For the moment, whenever I read, it is normally scripts. You start a book and then you think, 'I should be reading these five scripts.'

I've stopped reading about the death of books because it's wasteful and morbid and insulting to the authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, critics, and readers that keep the world community of fiction interesting.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

I’m rather apt to read old books than new.

So few people read poetry. That's sad, isn't it?

Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.

Most books are three-thirds rubbish.