Literary Ignorance Quotes

I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever. I'm not really book-smart.

Sometimes there's a snobbery among literary types that these people don't really get it, but in a lot of ways they get it more than the literati. There's a culture in the background that they understand and know. They get that deeper level.

God! How men of letters are stupid.

I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.

I have never read 'To Kill A Mockingbird.'

In Russia - Poets are considered a danger to the political system and are sent into Asylums. What a compliment to the Russian People, that poetry could move them so. In New Zealand, Poets are not considered a danger. No one reads poetry. Poets aren't sent to Asylums but they are considered mad nonetheless.

I'd obviously never heard of the group, but my ignorance in literary matters is to blame for that (every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me).

The music wasn't going to happen, and I realized I had read so little. I didn't know my way around any century. I was very under read.

No, I don't know any Emily Dickinson poems!

I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one of many.

I should confess that I'm woefully under-read in South African fiction.

A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet . . . yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.

To be completely honest, I didn't know 'Twilight' was a book.

I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering.

There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them; and now even written by people who don't understand them.

A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read.

But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.

In my worst moments, I think the biggest effect of 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' was to kill the happiness of people who had previously skipped through life, unaware of all the atrocities lurking in the world around them.

I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they "don't have time to read." This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.

Dismissals of poetry are nothing new. It's easy to dismiss poetry if one has not read much of it.

I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look.

Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets.

I went to work in 1962, and by '64 I was writing all the time, every night and every weekend. It didn't occur to me that, having read nothing and knowing nothing, I was in no position to write a book.

Do you want to guess what's in here?" I asked Dash. "I think I've got it figured out already. There's a new supply of red notebooks in there, and you want us to fill them in with clues about the works of, say, Nicholas Sparks." "Who?" I asked. Please, no more broody poets. I couldn't keep up. "You don't know who Nicholas Sparks is?" Dash asked. I shook my head. "Please don't ever find out," he said.

She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.