There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing..

Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. ….

With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one impo….

I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become….

People see everything through the lens of their obsessions..

We never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way..

If we want to write, it makes sense to read—and to read like a writer. If we wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see….

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another..

You aim for what you want and if you don't get it, you don't get it, but if you don't aim, you don't get anything..

To be truthful, some writers stop you dead in your tracks by making you see your own work in the most unflattering light. Each of us will meet a diff….

Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing..

What I love is how pissed off Jane Eyre is. She's in a rage for the whole novel and the payoff is she gets to marry this blind guy who's toasted his ….

I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers..

With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and ….

I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off,….

A lot of girls who turn into something remarkable start off as irrepressible, confident and a handful..

I know a lot of Eastern Europeans, and because of what they have been through and what they have seen, they have an attitude where they are not easil….

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' convinced me to drop out of Harvard graduate school. The novel reminded me of everything my Ph.D. program was trying ….

Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless ….

I can no more reread my own books than I can watch old home movies or look at snapshots of myself as a child. I wind up sitting on the floor, paralyz….

I went through college in the 1960s without having any idea that I was going to have to make a living. When I graduated in 1968 it was quite a shock ….