Quotessence
Home / Topics / Genres Quotes

Genres Quotes

Browse 22 quotes about Genres.

Genres Quotes

“Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.”

ReadingBooksVirginia WoolfGenres
Book:How Should One Read a Book?
Create image

“This, I think, should answer why I have more often than not written stories which, for a convenient label, are called science fiction. There are few literary fields, it seems to me, that deal so strikingly with themes that concern us all today; there are few more exciting genres; there are none fresher or so full of continually renewed and renewable concepts. It is, after all, the fiction of ideas, the fiction where philosophy can be tinkered with, torn apart, and put back together again, it is the fiction of sociology and psychology and history compounded and squared by time. It is the fiction where you may set up and knock down your own political and religious and moral states. It can be a high form of Swiss watch-making. It can be poetry. It has resulted in some of the greatest writing in our past, from Plato and Lucian to Sir Thomas More and François Rabelais and on down through Jonathan Swift and Johannes Kepler to Poe and Edward Bellamy and George Orwell....”

WritingIdeasPhilosophyHistoryPsychologyBooksScience FictionSociologyGenresGenre Fiction
Book:Fahrenheit 451
Create image

“I paused at the top of the spiral staircase, and soaked in the view. In the daylight, the bookstore took on a new life. Motes of dust danced in the sunlight that streamed through the windows. It looked a lot cozier, as the colored glass window ornaments threw rainbows across the bookshelves and pirouetted across the hardwood floors like flecks of dappled sunlight on sand. Bookcases, filled to the brim, reached up to the ceiling, cluttered with so many colors and kinds of books, short and fat, long and wide, that it almost felt like an assault on the senses. The center of the bookstore was open to the second floor, where tall bookshelves towered so high you had to reach them with ladders. Heavy oak beams supported the roof. Planetariums and glass chimes and other ornaments hung from the rafters, catching the morning's golden light and throwing it across the store. The shelves were made from the same deep oak as the ceiling beams and the banisters on the second floor, signs hanging from the eye-level shelves detailing the different sections of the store: MEMOIR, FANTASY, SCI-FI, ROMANCE, SELF-HELP, NATURE, HOW-TO... This place was beautiful. I wondered, briefly, what it would be like to own a place like this. It was magical. A shop that sold the impossible inked onto soft white paper.”

Interior DesignBookstoreBookcasesGenres
Book:A Novel Love Story
Create image

“New Adult is a label that is condescending to readers and authors alike. It implies that the books act as training wheels between Young Adult and Adult. For the New Adult books that are particularly childish, the label implies that they are a step above Young Adult--which is insulting to the Young Adult books that are far superior. For the New Adult books that are particularly sophisticated, the label implies that they are not worthy of being considered "adult." It's a lose-lose situation for everyone. [...] Therefore, the new genre of New Adult is a large step backwards. It increases the system of categories and labels even further, and prevents readers from expanding their horizons and minds. The term is reductive and it is insulting to its own audience.”

BooksNew AdultCategorizationNew Adult FictionGenresCategorisation
Author:Lauren Sarner
Create image

“The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality depend by contact with mystery. Fiction should be both canny and uncanny. In a good deal of popular criticism, there is the notion operating that all fiction has to be about the Average Man, and has to depict average ordinary everyday life, that every fiction writer must produce what used to be called "a slice of life." But if life, in that sense, satisfied us, there would be no sense in producing literature at all.”

FictionPerceptionWriting LifeFiction WritingDemographicsReadersWriting FictionGenres
Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Create image

“Yorick's Used and Rare Books had a small storefront on Channing but a deep interior shaded by tall bookcases crammed with history, poetry, theology, antiquated anthologies. There was no open wall space to hang the framed prints for sale, so Hogarth's scenes of lust, pride, and debauchery leaned rakishly against piles of novels, folk tales, and literary theory. In the back room these piles were so tall and dusty that they took on a geological air, rising like stalagmites. Jess often felt her workplace was a secret mine or quarry where she could pry crystals from crevices and sweep precious jewels straight off the floor. As she tended crowded shelves, she opened one volume and then another, turning pages on the history of gardens, perusing Edna St. Vincent Millay: "We were very tired, were very merry, / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry..." dipping into Gibbon: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay..." and old translations of Grimm's Fairy Tales: "They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and stony places. And when it rained, the little sister said, 'Heaven and our hearts are weeping together...”

BooksBookstoreGenresGrimm Fairy TalesJess BachGibbonBook EntriesHogarth
Book:The Cookbook Collector
Create image

“For two weeks every August, the normally private Charlotte Square opens its gates to admit the literary masses. Huge white tents block views of the iron railings that normally keep everyone out, and picnic tables and pastel deck chairs circle the equestrian statue of Prince Albert in the middle of the lawn, inviting readers to relax with their newest signed novel. The tents fill with crowds to see every sort of author: high-flying politicos touting bestselling memoirs; writers of fantasy, chick-lit, sci-fi, young adult (and every possible combination of those). Authors and illustrators enthrall throngs of preschoolers and parents; up-and-comers present their work for appreciative and encouraging audiences. Books are signed by the hundreds and set out for sale in the inviting bookshop tents. People bask in the sunshine, when there is any, or gather in the café tent and grumble good-naturedly about the rain. They shake hands; gush "I love your work"; add to their "to be read" lists, and leave carrying new hardbacks in handy Book Festival-branded tote bags.”

BooksScotlandFestivalGenresBook Signings
Book:All Stirred Up
Create image

“As it happens, I have a terrible weakness for books." "What kinds of books?" "All kinds." Her white shoulders lifted in a charming little shrug, momentarily fascinating him. "History, science, natural philosophy." "Really?" Born and bred for action, he had never been much of a scholar himself. "Oh, yes. The ancients. Traveler's tales. And... Gothic novels," she admitted, biting her lip with an impish twinkle in her eyes. "Ghosts and curses and such.”

ScholarBookwormKate MadsenGenres
Book:My Dangerous Duke
Create image

“When you create a genre—which is not a movement—because it has no past—and if it has a past—its past is pregnant with a future bigger than its past—its past is its post-creation—only a point of departure—it created modes of thinking. A genre has in itself movements, generations—and after all these concepts expire in time—the genre—that is an artifact—that is a fact made shift—it doesn’t belong to a date—it is not dated—it includes all the expirations that expire in its belly—and it is still pregnant with new beginnings.”

Quotes About WritingGenresGenre BendingLiterary MovementsQuotes About Writing Books
Book:Putinoika
Create image