27 Quotes by John Sutherland

[Books are] vital to learning. Half the population don't go to football matches but that doesn't make football any less important.

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.

Every contact leaves a trace.

Literature, at its best, does not simplify, but it enlarges our minds and sensibilities to the point where we can better handle complexity--even if, as is often the case, we don't entirely agree with what we are reading

Why read literature? Because it enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can. It makes us more human.

There are two proposed bills in the works right now. We're hoping that with continued public pressure the legislature will vote to reform the property tax system.

I find the facilities here great. The teachers I've got to get used to their lingo and they've got to get used to mine. We tend to speak slang and sometimes that causes trouble, but I'm working on it.

He would, I suspect have approved of the brevity if nothing else.

It is going to be a contest of giants,