Literary Genre Quotes

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

  Jose Saramago

  Space, Genre Is, Sea

  "Still a street-fighting man". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2006.

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• Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

  Rick Moody

  Genre Is, Bookstores, Problem

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• I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.

  Pope Francis

  Speech, Definitions, Figures

  Pope Francis (2014). “My Door Is Always Open: A Conversation on Faith, Hope and the Church in a Time of Change”, p.17, A&C Black

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

  Aberjhani

  Intelligence, Mind, Technique

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• I would not be surprised to see interesting new forms of expression and literary genres develop as the e-book movement matures.

  Tom Peters

  Book, Expression, Interesting

  Source: www.researchgate.net

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

  Ben Lerner

  Dying, Fiction, Capacity

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.

  Ken Follett

  Century, Thrillers, Thriller Genre

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• People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy.

  Gary Saul Morson

  Philosophy, Lying, Book

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• Science fiction is the characteristic literary genre of the century. It is the genre that stands in opposition to literary modernism.

  David G. Hartwell

  Fiction, Century, Characteristics

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• I do not know what might be the most fitting description.... I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner. And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff: I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance.

  Pope Francis

  Jesus, Speech, Definitions

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• When Christians speak of the authority of Scripture, because Christians believe that this word, even though it's mediated through many different human authors, nevertheless is God breathed and is revealed by God and is utterly reliable and all that it says, with all of its different literary genres, it's trustworthy and without mistake or distortion. It is trustworthy and therefore, because it is from God it has God's authority.

  D. A. Carson

  Christian, Mistake, Believe

  Source: www.booksataglance.com

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• Others have questions about how it is that God and human beings can both be speaking through the one document such that you can see and read the personalities of the human authors with their individual vocabularies and literary genres, and yet this is nevertheless the word of God. How can that be? This is quite a contrast with Islam, for example, which holds that the Koran has been dictated in Arabic by God and as a result Mohammed is nothing more than the one who memorizes the word so as to pass it on. There is nothing of human contribution.

  D. A. Carson

  Vocabulary, Personality, Islam

  Source: www.booksataglance.com

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• 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.

  Félix J. Palma

  Cousin, Attitude, People

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• 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

  Literary Theory, Practice, Criticism

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.79, John Wiley & Sons

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• I have always liked reading biographies. It is the ideal literary genre for someone too prim, like me, to acknowledge a gossipy interest in the living - don't you hate gossips, aren't they too awful? - but avid for any nuggets from the private lives of the dead because that is perfectly respectable, an altogether worthy and informative way of spending one's time.

  Jill Tweedie

  Hate, Reading, Avid

  Jill Tweedie (1980). “It's only me: pieces from a column”, Robson Books Limited

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• 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

  Writing, Men, Awkward

  Erwin Chargaff (1978). “Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature”, p.61, Paul & Company Pub Consortium

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• 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

  Spiritual, Exercise, Needs

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