Literary Depth Quotes

Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.

If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.

I feel a lot of adult fiction looks down on plot as a lesser form of literature.

One doesn't read Jane Austen; one re-reads Jane Austen.

What good is a book that does not even transport us beyond all books?

I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.

The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

Titles are too "thin" for the nineteenth century.

There are more truths in a good book than its author meant to put in it.

The ultimate storyteller is Shakespeare, who was able to get the 'groundlings' to laugh at his bawdy humor and storylines but could still be studied by scholars to this day for the complexity of his language, meter, and symbolism. That's the real guy.

Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism, irony, or musical language, but it seems to me that every book-at least every one worth reading-is about something.

You are - all your experience just kind of accumulates, and the novel takes a richness of its own simply because it has the weight of all those years that one's put into it.

I was once told by a very well-respected editor, "Category horror is about good vs. evil, that's all it is." And I thought, "That's why it's no good. That's why I find that stuff unreadable." One is looking for something that's a little more emotionally complex and nuanced.

I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud.

I always consider Shakespeare like a huge room. I mean, you open the door, and you can go anywhere.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.

There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristam Shandy or Shakespeare's Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he "has read" them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter?

There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

I wish - I wish instead of just recommending these books, I could set them down at your doorstep. The collected stories of John Updike, the second volume of T.C. Boyle's collected stories, and Stanley Crouch's book about the rise and times of our genius saxophone player Charlie Parker. These are deep books, books that you can get lost in.

Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.

A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand.

The great authors share their souls with us- "literally.

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.