Literary Choice Quotes

As with companions so with books. We may choose those which will make us better, more intelligent, more appreciative of the good and the beautiful in the world, or we may choose the trashy, the vulgar, the obscene, which will make us feel as though we've been 'wallowing in the mire.

I have books I like very much, but I don't think there are any books that everyone should read. I prefer a world in which some people read this, and others read that.

I believe that kids as well as adults are entitled to books of no socially redeeming value.

I didn't consciously make the decision to write an adult novel. I didn't think of it as my riposte to the YA genre.

Well meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading - do not discourage children from reading because you feel they're reading the wrong thing. There is no such thing as the wrong thing to be reading and no bad fiction for kids.

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

I don't want to use quotation marks anymore, I've gone back and forth with them. In Ghosts, I didn't use them, for instance, all the way back in the early eighties.

Why vampires? You write centuries-long family sagas—why not write historical epics without any hint of the supernatural?" "Well, that would be boring, wouldn't it?" "Yeah, God only knows what Tolstoy was thinking.

In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.

Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?