Reader Quotes

When you go to the mind reader, do you get half price?

Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the author.

I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down.

In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.

Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing; the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.

A writer is a reader who is moved to emulation.

We need a leader, not a reader.

A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response.

If you can make the reader laugh he is apt to get careless and go on reading.

Despereaux marveled at his own bravery. He admired his own defiance. And then, reader, he fainted.

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle.

There are hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman.

The reader who is illuminated is, in a real sense, the poem.

But, reader, there is no comfort in the word "farewell," even if you say it in French. "Farewell" is a word that,in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.

From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader

Show the reader what the character thinks about, and then the reader will think about it too.

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator, and thou wilt be safe; but if thou trustest to the book called the scriptures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood.

I'm not a speed reader. I'm a speed understander.

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.

Character design, like story design, requires a hook to grab the reader’s attention.

You do not characterize by telling the reader about the character. You do it by showing the character thinking, speaking and acting in a characteristic way. You simply show it and shut up.

Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.

Poem in other words may or may not result from inspiration but must (in reader and author alike) produce it--

If you want to be a well-paid copywriter, please your client. If you want to be an award-winning copywriter, please yourself. If you want to be a great copywriter, please your reader.

Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others.

I picked up reading late because I grew up dyslexic. When I went to college, a friend who was a big reader got me started on a number of writers, including Hemingway.

The bottom line always remains the same: What is the basic humanity of the character? How do I make them resonate with the reader?

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Those who write clearly have readers.

What makes a story is how well it manages to connect with the reader, the visceral effect it has.

I write for somebody who has my own limitations. My reader has a certain difficulty with concentrating, which in my case comes from being a film viewer.

I don't want to force my politics on my readers.

It's good not only to realize that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't want to. There's a certain type of reader that you don't ever want to write for.

A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.

I like to blur the line between fact and fiction, but not to condescend to the reader by enmeshing her/him into some sort of a postmodern coop.

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

When I need a word and do not find it in French, I select it from other tongues, and the reader has either to understand or translate me. Such is my fate.

It is hard news that catches readers. Features hold them.

Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.

Sometimes a book is better than it ever had a right to be because of the history the reader brings to the reading and because of the methods educators use to bring a particular story alive.

Reader, I married him.

There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.

Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand.

Writing shouldn't come between the reader and what's being described. It should be as transparent as possible.

Righteousness alone can exalt them [America] as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself and encourage it in others.

At some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.