The British have long had a taste for bad books; but they like them well-written.
--Malcolm Bradbury
[On Henry James] One of the nicest old ladies I have ever met.
--William Faulkner
Most new books are forgotten within a year, especially by those who borrow them.
--Evan Esar
Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and frequently lies down to rest.
--Max Eastman
A good book tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad book tells the truth about its author.
--G. K. Chesterton
[On Ben Jonson] Reading him is like wading through glue.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson
A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to repeating yourself.
-- Don Marquis
[On Norman Mailer] He is now what he wanted to be: the patron saint of bad journalism.
-- Gore Vidal
[On Charlotte Bronte] I wish her characters would talk less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.
-- George Eliot
[Joseph] Conrad spent the whole day finding the mot juste, then killed it.
-- Ford Madox Ford
A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
-- Mark Twain[On P. G. Wodehouse] English literature's performing flea.
-- Sean O'Casey
The big advantage of a book is that it's easy to rewind. Close it and you're right back at the beginning.
-- Jerry Steinfeld
[Evelyn] Waugh is an antique in search of a period, a snob in search of a class.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge
A literary movement consists of five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other cordially.
-- George Moore
To cay that Agatha [Christie]'s characters are like cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard.
-- Ruth Rendell
I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.'
-- Richard Brautigan
My father [Kingsley] always had doubts about the Booker Prize although they evaporated on the announcement that he had won it.
-- Martin Amis
[On E. M. Forster] He is limp and damp and mild as the breath of a cow.
-- Virginia Woolf.
[On Aldous Huxley] The stupid person's idea of a clever person.
-- Elizabeth Bowen
7 comments:
Good thing I'm into Asian movies lately!
Yikes! Blistering commentary!
youch!
oh thank you Angel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good picks. There are so many barbs to choose from!
I probably have read zero classics.
Sometimes the pen is the sword!
Happy Mardi Gras, Angel!
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