Reader Quotes

I simply write with an intelligent reader in mind. I don't think about how old they are.

We're all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.

The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.

[from a reader] I hope she learns to look for the joy in life instead of picking out negatives - it will change her life for the better.

A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page.

A discursive student is almost certain to fall into bad company. Ten minutes with a French novel or a German rationalist have sent a reader away with a fever for life.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which delight a reasonable reader.

I can give advice to anyone interested in writing in one word: Read! I think it's much more important to be a reader than to be a writer!

When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.

I'm an equal opportunity reader - although I don't much read plays. And since I was raised a Presbyterian, pretty much all pleasures are guilty.

I wish you were a mind-reader. I want you to know everything but I don't want to have to tell you. Because there are some things I don't want to say out loud.

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.

Good writing is about finding and exploiting anecdotes that resonate with the reader. In storytelling, it's OK if you only make one point, as long as it's a good one.

I was really influenced by Joan Didion and Pauline Kael; they were both at the height of their influence when I was coming into my own as a reader.

Writing in a nuanced way, getting at all the details in a way that remains interesting for the reader, is very difficult.

Each servant stamps the reader with a look.

Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

A leader is a reader.

Not every article in every magazine or newspaper is meant to be a valentine card addressed to every reader's self-esteem.

The one thing I wished for my children is that they'd be readers.

At the same time, as you know, unless you are a comic book reader, Daredevil is not a known thing.

It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'

The real tight interface is between the book and the reader-the world of the book is plugged right into your brain, never mind the [virtual reality] bodysuit.

The writer has a feeling and utters it from his true self. The reader reads it and is immediately infected and has exactly the same feeling. This is the whole secret of enchantment and fascination.

The advertiser's logotype at the bottom of the ad can be considered as part of the headline. After reading the headline, the reader instinctively looks down at the logotype to see the company name.

I want to be remembered most as a writer - one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well.

A great novelist must open the reader's heart, allow the reader to remember the vastness and glory -- and shame and shabbiness -- of what it is to be human.

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.

I was not a big comic-book reader.

The clever reader who is capable or reading between these lines what does not stand written in them but is nevertheless implied will be able to form some conception.

Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.

The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.

Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too.

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.

You must find the right voice (or voices) for the timbre that can convince a reader to give himself up to you.

The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.

To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.

I'm an ecumenical reader, grew up with all sorts of fiction, teach writing, went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, so my tastes and interests are broad.

The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

I've always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate.

The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiment of his reader, and then to tell them what they like to believe.

What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.

Hitler was an avid reader, a passion that stayed with him through all the phases of his career.

The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.

I think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that the writer is able to dramatise that private world.

Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.

I was eccentric, even as a kid. I was an early reader, an early talker. I was very curious in a way that maybe the other kids weren't. I was a little more outgoing.

Fictional characters exist in only two places, neither of which is on the printed page. They exist, first, in the mind of the writer and, second, in the mind of the reader.