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Who said, ‘The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think’?
The curious origin of a famous quotation
‘The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think’ is a quotation that is often attributed to Harper Lee, the author of the seminal work of twentieth-century American literature, To Kill a Mockingbird. But did Harper Lee originate this quotation?
Numerous websites give the credit to Harper Lee, it’s true. (See, for instance, these pages on Goodreads and Bustle, and this book.) It’s been shared numerous times on social media with Lee’s name attached to it. But it doesn’t feature in her Wikiquote page, and cannot be traced to any known interview she gave, nor to either of the two novels published in her lifetime, To Kill a Mockingbird or Go Set a Watchman. Did Lee actually say it? Read the rest of this entry
15 Great Quotes about the Novel
The best quotations from writers – about the art of the novel
What should a novel be? Writers down the ages have often decreed that the novel should be one thing or another. Here are fifteen of the best quotes from writers about the novel as an art form, as a mode of social enquiry, as a book of questions, and much else besides.
A novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it. – Randall Jarrell Read the rest of this entry
Who Said, ‘I am not young enough to know everything’?
The origins of a famous quip – in a half-forgotten work of literature
This should be an easy question. Surely it was Oscar Wilde who first said, ‘I am not young enough to know everything’? It certainly sounds like one of Wilde’s witty quotations, and numerous quotation sites (see, for instance, here and here) attribute the line to Wilde, but the attribution predates the web, with James Scott’s Daily Writing Journal in 1987 giving Wilde as the author. But it appears the issue is a little more complicated than that. And the true origins of this quotation lie in a play by a writer best-known for a work of children’s literature. Read the rest of this entry
