A Quote by James Baldwin

I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

James Baldwin

Quote Topics

About Again Began Bleak Certainly Childhood Consider Dismiss Fantasy Learned Living Novels Observation Plotting Read Restrained Story Time Usual Would

Quote Author

James Baldwin
American - Writer
August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987

I've read every single fantasy novel there is. I mean, I would challenge a lot of people to read more fantasy novels than I have.

Felicia Day

I'm living out a childhood fantasy. Our house is in a historic district of a small town that I used to read about in storybooks

Patty Duke

I'm living out a childhood fantasy. Our house is in a historic district of a small town that I used to read about in storybooks.

Patty Duke

My mother lived her life through movies and books - she read everything there was to read. And she read to me every night. I never went to sleep without her reading to me. And she fantasized about the book and she would talk about it, the place, and you would think that after she read the book and after she told you stories about it, that she had actually been there. I learned about story from her, and I learned the value of a great story, and the value of great characters.

Jerry Weintraub

When you read a supernatural suspense story or a ghost story, or a horror story, the evil at play is something that you can dismiss. And I wonder if, in this time, if people really want to be sitting on the subway reading a book about someone releasing a dirty bomb on the subway.

Michael Koryta

In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many other Pakistani writers, they encounter ideas, notions, ways of thinking about the world, thinking about their society that are different. And fiction functions in a countercultural way as it does in America and certainly as it did in the, you know, '60s.

Mohsin Hamid

I guess I would say that most of what I've learned about storytelling derives from novels and short stories. I cannot think of a novel or story, or a novelist or story writer, who thinks in terms of three-act structure.

Tom Bissell

If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

Terry Pratchett

There're no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it's the best thing.

Willow Smith

My mother's childhood was complex, disjointed, and disturbing. As children, we would gather round and ask her to tell us again and again The Story of Her Childhood. It was Grimmsian, Andersenesque: a classic fairy tale replete with goodies and baddies.

Lisa Jewell

People read vampire novels and say, 'Oh I want to read another vampire novel.' People read fantasy, and they're like, 'Oh I love fantasy.' I don't know that people are necessarily finishing 'Hunger Games' and immediately wanting to read another dystopian tale.

David Levithan

People read vampire novels and say, Oh I want to read another vampire novel. People read fantasy, and theyre like, Oh I love fantasy. I dont know that people are necessarily finishing Hunger Games and immediately wanting to read another dystopian tale.

David Levithan

Anyone who has set out to invent a purely imaginary story knows that the whole thing is fantasy, from beginning to end; there must be a sense of magic created about the most restrained of naturalism.

Russell Smith

I'm not someone who has a list of great books I would read if I only had the time. If I want to read a particular so-called classic, I go ahead and read it. If I had more time, I would certainly read more, but I'd read the way I always do - that is, I'd read whatever happened to interest me, not necessarily classics.

Sigrid Nunez

It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky.

James Baldwin

Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.