Literary Medium Quotes

The novel has always been the form that incorporates other forms. For me, it has always been the ultimate medium.

Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.

I'm not being disrespectful of the medium; it's just not as important as the work that I actually do [books].

The difficulty with poetry is that it doesn't have the life that Shakespeare or Jane Austen have beyond the page. You can't make a costume drama out of it. There's no place for it to go except trapped inside its little book.

All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.

The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along.

I think poetry is a fabulous medium to encapsulate thoughts far more precisely than prose.

The greater the novel, the more it is apt to embody the special, non-replicable properties of the written medium.