Influential Literature Quotes

Of all my childhood books, 'The Giving Tree and Hope for the Flowers' really did change my early world, but after reading 'Momo' in my 30s, I thought, Ahhhhhh, this is the one book I wish I had read as a kid! Then reread at every subsequent chapter of my life.

I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.

I read 'Sabella or The Blood Stone' by Tanith Lee, which was hugely influential to me. I love Tanith's writing. She's just really lyrical, beautiful use of language.

Miracles is the sort of book that once you've read it you'll wonder where it's been all your life

I went to the library and began to read some stuff on my own. My discovery of James Baldwin was life-changing. I read Go Tell It on the Mountain first, and that was hugely impactful.

'The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement in Iraq,' by Hanna Batatu. Few may wish to take on this massive, obscure work, but it changed my life, and I love it.

One of the very first serious books I read when I was growing up was 'Atlas Shrugged.'

Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life; 'The Catcher in the Rye' did just that, and I still do love it.

The book that made a lasting impression was the one my mother gave each of us when she decided we were ready for our first 'adult novel,' Lucy Maud Montgomery's 'The Blue Castle.'

I really, honest to God, didn't know what to read until I was out of college and living in Boston, and someone said, 'Well, why don't you read Hemingway?' And I thought, 'OK. I guess I'll try this Hemingway fellow.'

[Herschel and Humboldt] stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science. No one or a dozen other books influenced me nearly so much as these two. I copied out from Humboldt long passages about Teneriffe and read them aloud on one of [my walking excursions].

The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.

For me, it was a formative experience reading Eliot when I was younger. 'The Waste Land,' in particular.

I can't write about nice, easy topics because that won't change the world. And I do want to change the world - one reader at a time.

As an adolescent, Vonnegut made my life bearable.

One of my favorite stories growing up was A Wrinkle in Time. I loved that book. I still remember the image, so strongly, of all the kids coming out of their house at the same time, they're all bouncing a ball at the same time, and they all go back in at the same time. A Wrinkle in Time moved me deeply.

There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten.

'Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case,' 'The Secret of the Old Clock,' 'Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret,' 'Flowers in the Attic,' 'Gone With the Wind' - these are the books that defined my childhood. They thrilled me. They made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world.

When I was a kid, I lived in this small town way out in the country. We had three TV channels and one radio station. I couldn't even get my hands on good comic books. My aunt, who is a librarian, gave me Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie," and Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia." They were such incredible treasures to have in my somewhat mundane country life.

My point of view comes more from the literature I've read and the comedy of the era. When I was a kid, coming across National Lampoon Magazine, that was a big thing. I suddenly felt like there were other people that felt the way I did, and there was a way of expressing and communicating this worldview.

I grew up with Shakespeare, and there are so many wonderful teachings in those plays. The stories are all so unique and timeless. There is just so much learning in that body of work, and that is something I will always go back to.

I work in theology and Christian books all day long, when Im studying, so its just kind of nice to pick up something different. The books that have influenced me, theres not just one book that was a watershed, although Mere Christianity was as much as any.