
“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.”
Source: Works of Samuel Johnson
As quoted in The New York Times (2 July 1978)
“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.”
Source: Works of Samuel Johnson
Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
Context: I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.
“Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.”
Source: My Side of the Mountain
IRE Transactions on Information Theory (1956), volume 2, issue 1, page 3. * The Bandwagon
Shannon
Claude E.
2
1
1956
March
10.1109/TIT.1956.1056774.
“Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.”
Variant: Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.