Reader Quotes
The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.
Every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique.
An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
Which brings me to my conclusion upon Free Will and Predestination, namely - let the reader mark it - that they are identical.
It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.
The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.
I worked in Hollywood as a reader and a would-be writer for about 6 years before I sold my first story.
Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren’t distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.
For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.
It is in the hard, hard rockpile labor of seeking to win, hold, or deserve a reader's interest that the pleasant agony of writing again comes in.
I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.
I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the reader will involve himself or herself.
A successful novel should interrupt the reader’s life, make him or her miss appointments, skip meals, forget to walk the dog.
Remember that the reader's attention is yours for only a single instant. They will not use up their valuable time trying to figure out what you mean.
The act of reading is a partnership. The author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home.
Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash.
No one ever became, or can become truly eloquent without being a reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language.
A poem is what the reader lives through under the guidance of the text and experiences as relevant to the text.
What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other
I was never much of a reader when I was a boy. Books bored me. I liked action. But I spent a lot of time thinking about things. I'd imagine all kinds of situations and how I would handle them.
Mirror the reader to himself and then show him afterward how your product fits his needs.
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
Skill sheets, workbooks, basal reader, flash cards are not enough. To convey meaning you need someone sharing the meaning and flavor of real stories with the student.
It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, worldview and thoughts.
Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.
When I was about 25, I went to a hand reader, this Indian guy in a funky neighborhood. He said: The height of your success won't happen until you're in your late 40s.
Economic controversy is generally a thankless task. You cannot hope to make any impression on your opponent. Yet he is the only reader on whose interest you can count.
Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own.
I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.
