Literary Continuity Quotes

I'm a big believer in pairing classics with contemporary literature, so students have the opportunity to see that literature is not a cold, dead thing that happened once but instead a vibrant mode of storytelling that's been with us a long time - and will be with us, I hope, for a long time to come.

Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel.

It’s as much a writer’s concern, who is responsible to his readers for all the books written before him as well as those which will be written after him.

No writer can really sustain two huge - I hate the word 'franchises.'

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway, Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learned.

Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections... science is a ladder... poetry is a winged flight... An artistic masterpiece exists for all time... Dante does not efface Homer.

For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.

I can't single out one of my books or characters as a favorite. In the same way that I don't have a favorite kidney, my books are organically all part of myself. I might even say that put all together, the books are one ongoing, developing story - which, not coincidentally, happens to be my own lifestory.

I do see, in some younger writers, elements and things that I have used - and I am very touched and flattered because I am part of a tapestry that is being absorbed by authors.