Latest Stephen Dobyns Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I remember coming upon Philip Larkin in my 20s in the early '60s and when Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" came out it knocked me off my feet.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Feet, Ariel, Remember

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• Louise Gluck, C.K. Williams, Thomas Lux. A lot of the poets that I like are the ones that influenced me as a writer.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Poet

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• I had a period when I read Nobel Prize winners. I figured they had to be good. I discovered some people I didn't know about, like the Icelandic writer Halldor Laxness, who wrote "Independent People."
  .

  Stephen Dobyns

  Independent, People, Winner

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• I'm reading a manuscript by Rodney Jones, "Village Prodigies",it's one of the best contemporary poetry books I've ever read ever.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Book, Reading, Village

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• There's a Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas. He was a very crotchety, strange man, but his poems are wonderful. He was nominated for the Nobel in the 1990s but never won.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Men, Strange Man, Wonderful

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• Sometimes someone will tell me about an author I've never heard of before and that will send me to that person. That's how I discovered Thomas Bernhard, an Austrian novelist whose novels tend to be one long rant.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Long, Novelists, Sometimes

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• I'm reading "The Sunset of a Splendid Century" by W.H. Lewis. He was C.S. Lewis's brother. He wrote two books about the French court of Louis XIV that are incredibly detailed. They are books that on every page you say, "Wow, think of that."

  Stephen Dobyns

  Brother, Reading, Book

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• I think I made a mistake with [Jane] Austen by reading all six in a row. There are similarities to the plots so by the time I got to the last one I could anticipate what was happening too easily. But her characterizations are amazing.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Mistake, Reading, Thinking

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• Other than fiction and poetry I tend to read history.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Fiction

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• I had not read George Eliot, so read a few. I felt ashamed I hadn't read "Middlemarch" before.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Ashamed, Middlemarch, Eliot

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• I majored in English in college and that was my major in graduate school before switching to creative writing. I read a lot of [Charles] Dickens and [Anthony ] Trollope, but there was lots of stuff I hadn't read like Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," which is so well written and funny.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Writing, School, College

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• I never read Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier." I've been reading books that I should have read years ago and did not. That's one of them.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Book, Reading, Years

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• Reading a good poem can give me a far bigger kick than a novel. But it's not something I can keep doing. It would be like shooting up 10 times a day.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Reading, Giving, Would Be

  Source: epaper.bostonglobe.com