Life is a very orderly thing but in fiction there is a huge liberation and freedom. I can do what I like. There's nothing that says I can't write a page of full stops. There is no 'should' involved although you wouldn't know that from literary reviews and critics.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

At last in 1611 was made under the auspices of King James the famous King James version and this is the great literary monument of the English language.

I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously and I would I think be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church.

I believe my publisher has shown a great deal of faith in me over a lot of years but I'm not prepared to be so arrogant to say that the long-term literary value of my work would compensate them for a financial failure.

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?

In England literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education.

For this reason to study English literature without some general knowledge of the relation of the Bible to that literature would be to leave one's literary education very incomplete.

The hoary joke in the literary world based on 'Dreams From My Father ' was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama he could have made it as a writer.

The New Testament evinces its universal design in its very style which alone distinguishes it from all the literary productions of earlier and later times.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom the poetic passion the desire of beauty the love of art for its own sake has most.

I often find myself privately stewing about much British art thinking that except for their tremendous gardens that the English are not primarily visual artists and are in nearly unsurpassable ways literary.