"I’ve read this book several times. As a writer, I am in awe of Márquez’s genius. The first sentence reveals the gist of the entire novel, and yet everything in this love story is surprising. I would count this as the most romantic novel I’ve read. It is the family legend of undying love we all wish we had."

"You should read Dawn Powell’s novels and then read her diaries, or vice versa, it doesn’t really matter. But when you read her diaries you see what it really means to be a writer. She struggled her whole life for money. She’s constantly worrying about money, because she doesn’t have any. This is the condition of most writers."

"This biography, written with a novelist’s stylization, was an incendiary moment in western culture. Ironically, it became the weapon that would win the cultural wars for dispossessed black, urban America. It’s impossible to think of what street culture of white Hollywood would look like without it. Slim is the most influential writer in English since Shakespeare."

"Virginia Woolf said of Austen, ‘For a great writer, she was the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness,’ which is a fantastic line. You’re drawn into the story, and you come out the other end, and you know you’ve seen something great in action. But you can’t see the pyrotechnics; there’s nothing flashy."

"In my opinion James Purdy is the most underrated writer in American literature, probably because he was gay. His books are heart wrenching, brutal and sometimes flat-out mean-spirited but they are also incredibly beautiful and endlessly poetic. I'm not all that fond of books that make me cry but in Purdy's case, I don't mind."

"The way that he communicates is really good for any sort of lyricist to read. He’s so good at being really vulnerable and exposing things about himself that no-one else would ever talk about. But he does it in a way that’s so human and so comical, that I feel like it’s really inspiring for any other writer."