Literary Skepticism Quotes

I steer clear of any novel that gets billed as a 'meditation.'

'The Dublin Magazine' has been edited with good taste, and it is very agreeable reading, but to speak quite candidly, I do not believe in the future of any literary journal any more than I believe in the future of the Trinity.

I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.

I am no fan of books.

I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand.

There is a lot of scepticism today as to whether memoir is real. But when fiction is done at a certain level there is scepticism as to whether it is really fiction.

I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,' 'tender' or 'universal.'

If I actually believed that the progress of human understanding depended on our crop of contemporary novelists, I would shoot myself.

No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books.

If I ever wrote a book, people would never believe it.

What does Sinclair know about anything? He's just a writer.

I am extremely suspicious of dreams, apparitions and visions, both in literature and in films and plays. Perhaps it's because mental excesses of this sort smack too much of being 'arranged.'

I am always slightly mystified by the whole 'Snow White' story. What are the chances of coming across that many diminutive men living in one house in the woods?

I had never believed in the sacred nature of literature. God had died when I was fourteen.

I'm skeptical that the novel will be 're-invented.'

If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, I must be dafter than I look.

I think that feels like it to me. I mean whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.

Whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.