Difficult Books Quotes

“When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid.”
― William H. Gass

“My mother taught me that reading is a kind of work, and that every paragraph merits exertion, and in this way, I learned how to absorb difficult books. Soon after I went to kindergarten, however, I learned that reading difficult books also brings trouble. I was punished for reading ahead of the class, for being unwilling to speak and act "nicely." I didn't know why I simultaneously feared and adored my female teachers, but I did know that I needed their attention”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“A publishing acquaintance suggests an analogy with music: jazz is more complex than blues. It’s harder to play and harder to appreciate. That doesn’t mean there isn’t lots of good blues and lots of bad jazz. It doesn’t mean that jazz is an innately superior artform. It simply describes a formal difference between the two…All this is not to say that some difficult novels are not truly ghastly. If hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, you could say that pretentiousness is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.”
― Sam Leith

“If difficult times teach us the most important lessons, we should then learn to read difficult books.”
― Joyce Rachelle

“Can't recognize the organization of a novel? Assume there isn't one. Baffled by "arcana" — i.e., stuff you don't already know? Call the author pretentious. Find a book hard-going? Assume the author is deliberately torturing you.”
― Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600