“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.”

Source: Works of Samuel Johnson

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it." by Samuel Johnson?
Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson 362
English writer 1709–1784

Related quotes

Stephen King photo

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

P. L. Travers photo

“A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

As quoted in The New York Times (2 July 1978)

Vladimir Nabokov photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Jean Craighead George photo
Octavio Paz photo

“I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: An Erotic Beyond: Sade

Stephen King photo
Steven Spielberg photo

“Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.”

Steven Spielberg (1946) American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur

Variant: Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

Steven Brust photo
Anne Fadiman photo

“One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights […] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays

Related topics