Literary Genre Quotes

Somehow this literary genre, which most people condemned, acted as a sort of counterbalance to Charles's soul; it was the ballast that prevented him from lurching into the serious or melancholy, unlike Andrew, who had been unable to adopt his cousin's casual attitude to life, and to whom everything seemed so achingly profound, imbed with that absurd solemnity that the transience of of existence conferred upon even the smallest act. ~ Felix J. Palma

Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind. It portrays events of interest to all of humanity, and thus science fiction should be the literary genre most accessible to readers of different nations. Science fiction often describes a day when humanity will form a harmonious whole, and I believe the arrival of such a day need not wait for the appearance of extraterrestrials. ~ Liu Cixin

What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as aesthetic object rather than social practice, would make something a good deal more systematic and 'scientific' out of all this. The answer arrived in 1957, in the shape of the Canadian Northrop Fryes mighty 'totalization' of all literary genres, Anatomy of Criticism . ~ Terry Eagleton

We can study files for decades, but every so often we are tempted to throw up our hands and declare that history is merely another literary genre: the past is autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report. ~ Julian Barnes

Why should it be any surprise that people find solace in the most intimate literary genre? Poetry slows us down, cherishes small details. A large disaster erases those details. We need poetry for nourishment and for noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it more successfully than any news channel we could name. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century. ~ Ken Follett

The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic. This may appear a surprising claim, which would not have seemed even remotely
conceivable at the start of the century and which is bound to encounter fierce resistance even now. However, when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and also George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, William Golding's Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity's Rainbow. The list could readily be extended, back to the late nineteenth century with H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds, and up to writers currently active like Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin. It could take in authors as different, not to say opposed, as Kingsley and Martin Amis, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Don DeLillo, and Julian Barnes. By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode.

This is not the same, one should note, as fantasy as a literary genre – of the authors l ~ Tom Shippey

I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre. ~ Ben Lerner

But when interpreted correctly - paying attention to the original context, considering the literary genre, thinking through authorial intent - the Bible is never wrong in what it affirms and must never be marginalized as anything less than the last word on everything it teaches. ~ Kevin DeYoung

Literary genres and techniques tend to take form in one's mind somewhat the way computer templates provide form for different computer tasks. ~ Aberjhani

A scientific autobiography belongs to a most awkward literary genre. If the difficulties facing a man trying to record his life are great - and few have overcome them successfully - they are compounded in the case of scientists, of whom many lead monotonous and uneventful lives and who, besides, often do not know how to write ... ~ Erwin Chargaff

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. ~ Jose Saramago

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre, and installed instead, as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it, but anybody can do it. ~ Marilyn Hacker

I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. The novel receives streams of science, philosophy, poetry and contains all of these; it's not simply telling a story. ~ Jose Saramago

The question I ask myself is: have I really just become a squeamish middle-aged man, or has something happened to the horror genre that shows a growing appetite for watching torture, or at least a desire to explore it on film? And if so, why would that be? I can't pretend I know. I just know I don't like it. ~ Mark Gatiss

A writer must face up to the test of reality, including political reality, and that can't be done if he keeps his distance. A literary style cultivated like a hothouse plant may show a certain artificial purity, but it won't really be pure. ~ Gunter Grass

In other words, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show how I (and the hundreds of thousands like me) have transformed America. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

For me the genre of romance is about the characters. It's about following a journey between two people and watching them grow and develop and have their lives change for the better because of their presence in each other's world. ~ Samantha Young

Looking back, it's funny how the lighter family-friendly version of these classic Universal movie monsters that were satirized in The Munsters seduced me like a gateway drug into the genre. ~ Bryan Fuller

An important dimension of Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its debt to the oral tradition; to stories about wronged milkmaids, tales of superstition, and stories of love, betrayal and revenge, involving stock figures. This gives Tess of the d'Urbervilles an anti-realistic inflection. From the world of ballad and folktale Hardy draws such fateful coincidences as the failure of Angel to encounter Tess at the 'Club-walking' on which he intrudes with his brothers, the letter to Angel that she accidentally slips under the carpet, the loss of her shoes when she tries to visit his family, and the family portraits on the wall of their honeymoon dwelling, as well as several omens. This chimes effectively with a world in which the rural folk have a superstitious and fatalistic attitude to life. ~ Geoffrey Harvey

Crude at first [the short story] received a literary polish in the press, but its dominant quality remained. It was concise and condense, yet suggestive. It was delightfully extravagant - or a miracle of understatement ~ Bret Harte

I am driven to literary examples because you, the reader, and I do not live in the same neighbourhood; if we did, there would unfortunately be no difficulty about replacing them with examples from real life. ~ C.S. Lewis

An essay is a work of literary art which has a minimum of one anecdote and one universal idea. ~ Carol Bly

The thing about games is, players often say they don't care about story, but then if you took the story out, what would their reaction be? If no one cared about story, we'd all still be playing Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with Pac-Man, but the point is, there's a genre of games in which you want to become part of that world. ~ Karen Traviss

I love horror movies in space. I love it when the genre switches over and what was sci-fi becomes horror. ~ Kirk Hammett

Writing a book is like dating. It's exciting. It's dreamy. And after four years, I just want to end it. ~ Carole Radziwill

That's what happens when you personify hopes and dreams in one person. He becomes nothing more than a literary device. ~ Marlon James

How dare anyone, parent, schoolteacher, or merely literary critic, tell me not to act colored. ~ Arna Bontemps

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have. ~ August Wilson

There's something in your eyes that scares me,"
Max whispired, looking through the window.
Landon took her face into his hand and made her look into his eyes "What?" he asked. "What do you see?"
"Fear," she answered plainly. "I see fear ~ Shawn Kirsten Maravel

My advice to a budding literary critic would be as follows. Learn to distinguish banality. Remember that mediocrity thrives on "ideas." Beware of the modish message. Ask yourself if the symbol you have detected is not your own
footprint. Ignore allegories. By all means place the "how" above the "what" but do not let it be confused with the "so what." Rely on the sudden erection of your small dorsal hairs. Do not drag in Freud at this point. All the rest depends on personal talent. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

You didn't always have to give it back. And in that cold, somber chapel, Dan Kelly discovered that there were some things that you could not be forgiven for, and those were the things that you carried into the next life, if there was such a place; and if there was no next life nor any God, the consequence was the same: if you were not forgiven, you would die with regret. ~ Christos Tsiolkas

Every country should have a strong literary tradition of its own at the center, but it should also have an interest in other countries. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

My view, as one who taught it, is that the whole purpose of a literary education should be to tell people that these things exist. I don't think any teacher should try to 'teach an author,' but rather simply describe what the author has written. And this is what I tried to do. ~ Guy Davenport

I've just looked for ideas and great characters that I relate to and that I think I can offer something to the audience, and I no longer look at them as experiments or genre exercises at all. ~ Ron Howard

My tastes range all over the place, from vocal standards to Motown to 70s funk & soul to 80s pop to film scores to artists like R.E.M., Ben Folds, Prince, Annie Lennox, the Police, Elvis Costello, Cat Stevens, the Ditty Bops, local bands that friends of mine are in, and the list goes on ... I have no single favorite genre or artist. ~ Stephanie D'Abruzzo

Fashion and snobbery are also valuable as a defense against literary indigestion. Regardless of their quality, it is always better to read a few books carefully than skim through many, and, short of a personal taste which cannot be formed overnight, snobbery is as good a principle of limitation as any other.

I am eternally grateful, for example, to the musical fashion of my youth which prevented me from listening to Italian Opera until I was over thirty, by which age I was capable of really appreciating a world so beautiful and so challenging to my cultural heritage. ~ W.H. Auden

It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The main differences between contemporary English and American literature is that the baleful pseudo-professionalism imparted by all those crap M.F.A. writing programs has yet to settle like a miasma of standardization on the English literary scene. But it's beginning to happen. ~ Will Self

I bless the gods for not letting my education in rhetoric, poetry, and other literary studies come easily to me, and thereby sparing me from an absorbing interest in these subjects. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The new Pirates! builds on that legacy delivering an even more powerful and fun experience to players ... and is still unmatched in offering a blend of genres in one great game. ~ Sid Meier

I bet it was also the triumphant Aha! and not the truth itself that had fueled all those famous literary detectives I knew not much about except their names - Philip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes, Joe and Frank Hardy. I felt like yelling something celebratory on my way home, something like, Yeah! or Fuck, yeah! just like Marlowe would have yelled, just like the Hardys would have yelled, and maybe Holmes, too, although maybe that's why he kept Watson around; to tell Holmes to simmer down and not get too far ahead of himself. ~ Brock Clarke

I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I think there are a lot of artists that are very traditional. I think someone can be a fan of someone like Josh Turner and then turn around and be a big fan of someone like Taylor Swift because, at the end of the day, it's all about those songs. I feel like country music has the best songwriting and the best songs of any genre. ~ Charles Kelley

No subject is more touched on than love, in the human life stories as well as in the literary corpus they have left us ... No subject, either, is as discussed, as controversial, especially during the final period of human history, when the cyclothymic fluctuations concerning the belief in love became constant and dizzying. In conclusion, no subject seems to have preoccupied man as much; even money, even the satisfaction derived from combat and glory, loses by comparison, its dramatic power in human life stories. Love seems to have been, for humans of the final period, the acme and the impossible, the regret and the grace, the focal point upon which all suffering and joy could be concentrated. ~ Michel Houellebecq

I've been actively engaged with mythic imagery ever since I picked up that Rackham book, but it really came into focus for me when I moved from London to the country. As I walked the extraordinary landscape of Dartmoor, I looked at the trees and the rocks and the hills and I could see the personality in those forms ... then they metamorphosed under my pencil into faeries, goblins and trolls. After Alan and I published "Faeries", he moved on from the subject of faery folklore to illustrate Tolkien and other literary works ... while I discovered that my own exploration of Faerieland had only just begun. In the countryside, the old stories seemed to come alive around me; the faeries were a tangible aspect of the landscape, pulses of spirit, emotion, and light. They "insisted" on taking form under my pencil, emerging on the page before me cloaked in archetypal shapes drawn from nature and myth. I'd attracted their attention, you see, and they hadn't finished with me yet. ~ Brian Froud

My stuff is my stuff. I do it for my own reasons, using my own peculiar set of guidelines. I'm not a student of the genre. I don't care what anybody else does. ~ George A. Romero

I've made the film 'The Good, the Bad, the Weird,' which was an Eastern Western film. Obviously, the Western film is American and American only; there's really no Western genre over in Asia. ~ Kim Jee-woon

A funny little literary article in the hand is worth at least three Critiques of Pure Reason in the bush. ~ Aldous Huxley

The horror genre is my personal favorite. But then again, I was the kid who read coroner books for fun. ~ Candace Kita

It is a fact that unless children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they, and the society which they constitute or control, will go to destruction. Consequently, when a state resolves that religious instruction shall be banished from the schools and other literary institutions, it virtually resolves on self-destruction. ~ Charles Hodge

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world. ~ Charles Frazier

In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering. ~ John Updike

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time. ~ Wilkie Collins

A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror. ~ Peter Straub

She was sensitive enough and intelligent enough to understand, and her literary education could not but have sharpened her perception of the evidence before her eyes: that in the absurd raffle-draw that apportioned the destinies of post-colonial African societies two people starting off even as identical twins in the morning might quiet easily find themselves in the evening one as President shitting on the heads of the people and the other a nightman carrying the people's shit in buckets on his head. ~ Chinua Achebe