Quotes about reader

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“Hypocrite reader — my likeness — my brother!”

“At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.”

“.. books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information.”

“I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.”

“Normally writers do not talk much, because they are saving their conversations for the readers of their book-
those invisible listeners with whom we wish to strike a sympathetic chord.”

“As a reader I loathe introductions… Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.”

“If You don't give readers what they want, they'll be mad at you. If you give them what they do want, they'll be even more mad at you.”

“…when writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence…in love, never settle…value yourself first and this will help you to value others…life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest…everyone in the world is different, and that’s ok…”

“Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.”

“Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind---vividly, forcefully…”

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”

“[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start."

(Interview,, Issue 64, Winter 1975)”

“The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.”

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

“Not all readers become leaders, but all leaders must be readers.”

“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.”

“To my wonderful readers. Sorry about that apology for that last cliffhanger. I’ll try to avoid cliffhangers in this book. Well, except for maybe a few small ones… because I love you guys.”

“Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom.”

“write what readers want to read, which isn’t necessarily what you want to write.”

“Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.”

“We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.”

“The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”

“Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature's profligate generosity.”

“Question (from a reader) : Will the Wise Goddess Athena overthrow Zeus and become the ruler of Olympus?
Athena's answer : What an interesting idea… No, just kidding, Dad. Put away the lightning bolt.”

“Readers don’t work for writers. They work for themselves.”

“But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.”

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

“A reader doesn't really see the characters in a story; he feels them.”

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”

“I'd like to thank readers. Every time you open a book, it is a strike against ignorance. Unless you're reading Sarah Palin.”

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.”

“I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.”

“I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful.”

“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.”

“She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.”

“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.”

“Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.”

“The act of reading is a partnership. The author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home.”

“And you, CONSTANT READER. Thank God you’re still there after all these years. If you’re having fun, I am, too.”

“My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.”

“Best-selling horror fiction is indeed necessarily conservative because it must entertain a large number of readers. It’s like network television. I’m your local cable access station.”

“I am a slow reader, and fast eater; I wish it were the other way around.”

“An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.”

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader”

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

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.”

“Readers understand that the books celebrate female power. In the romance novel, the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on the earth, the human male, to his knees.”

“Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.”

“I hope that the kind reader recognises this as a despairing attempt at humour.”

“… it seems to us that the readers who want fiction to be like life are considerably outnumbered by those who would like life to be like fiction.”

“… and Jo laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the work-a-day world again.”

“Rats have a sense of humor. Rats, in fact think the world is very funny. And they are right, dear reader. They are right.”

“My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.”

“Why are we smiling when we loathe each other?’ ‘Why do we sell happiness to the readers of this magazine when we are profoundly unhappy ourselves, the slaves of fame?”

“The best books come from someplace deep inside…. Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.”

“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy”

“The world is dark and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.”

“No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.”

“For all the invisible girls and for my readers, for seeing me”

“I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop.”

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the 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.”

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

“I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form.”

“Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.”

“Reader, I ate him.”

“When a long book succeeds, the writer and reader are not just having an affair; they are married.”

“Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance".”

“The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at theduring the first eight pages.”

“Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.”

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

“That'd be just what I need: a rash of car thefts across America, committed by dedicated readers.”

“A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.”

“Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things that children usually do to amuse themselves. I never aged out of it.”

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

“A. J. nods out of politeness, but he doesn’t believe in random acts. He is a reader, and what he believes in is narrative construction. If a gun appears in act one, that gun had better go off by act three.”

“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it”

“Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.”

“A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.”

“Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.”

“Readers love fantasy, but we need horror. Smart horror. Truthful horror. Horror that helps us make sense of a cruelly senseless world.”

“I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.”

“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.”

“The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.”

“Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you.”

“Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.”

“If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.”

“A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”

“Okay, if this is what falling in love feels like, someone please kill me now. (Not literally, overzealous
readers.) But it was all too much—too much emotion, too much happiness, too much longing, perhaps
too much ice cream…”

“Despereaux," she whispered.
And then she shouted it, "Despereaux!"
Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.
Nothing.”

“Say it, reader. Say the word "quest" out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn't it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope. so trthen despererux died i n heaven and in peace”

“The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.”

“Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society”

“For every reader who dies today, a viewer is born, and we seem to be witnessing… the final tipping balance.”

“There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.”

“All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what’s cool.”

“If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.”

“Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing.”

“The love between a writer and a reader is never celebrated.”