If you don't have a unique voice, then you're not really a writer.
J. K. Rowling is one of my favourite authors, and I really admire how she created this big wizarding world. But I think our books are very, very different, and I don't think there can be a next J. K. Rowling. She is one of a kind.
Notable American Women is a weird nougat of a book that suggests Coetzee, Kafka, Beckett, Barthelme, O'Brien, Orwell, Paley, Borges-and none of them exactly. Finally you just have to chew it for its own private juice.
Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer-so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible.
In expressing so completely his own type, Mr. Yeats presents us with the case for integrity. If we can express eventually our own scholastic mentality in verse, I believe that our art will lead us not towards, but away from, English art.
There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.
Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
No one has written the way Isaiah does. The royal style, the majesty of the language. He is called the prince of the prophets. No one has written like that. I've studied ancient literature, Homer, for example, but it's not the same thing.
Only Agatha Christie can write like Agatha Christie.
I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done.
It is one test of a fully developed writer that he reminds us of no one but himself.
A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.
The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected.
If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.
Literature has drawn a funny perimeter that other art forms haven't.
Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.
The unusual is only found in a very small percentage, except in literary creations, and that is exactly what makes literature.
The treasure of a writer is to maintain their own style.
Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they're complete, not leading anywhere.
The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct.
I think I am the most impressed with writing styles that defy category, like Kharms or Selby, Breton or Jarry, where you become as interested in the writer as much as the writing itself. It's all these things that make reading so appealing to me.
