Quotes About Readers

#1. If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Ray Bradbury

#2. 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.

Cassandra Clare

#3. You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.

Ian McEwan

#4. As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.

Michael Cunningham

#5. I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers.

Avi

#6. Reasonable readers would have accepted my book about ghouls as a work of fiction, but such readers are rare, and most condemned it as a hoax. Even worse, totally unreasonable readers took it for a scientific treatise.

H.P. Lovecraft

#7. People want to download publications quickly and read them without cruft. Publications that started in print carry too much baggage and usually have awful apps. 'The Magazine' was designed from the start to be streamlined, natively digital, and respectful of readers' time and attention.

Marco Arment

#8. I feel like these characters, these places, these beings and plots, and even these inanimate objects are counting on me for survival. It's my responsibility to reveal them to the world, to show my readers the names of these things, to show them their histories and stories.

Nicholas Trandahl

#9. Readers & Writers Connect By Finding One Another

R.J. Harries

#10. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell.

Max Barry

#11. I want to introduce my readers to people they may never have met, take them places they may never have visited, and present them with situations they may never have encountered.

J. Everett Prewitt

#12. What makes a book memorable is the message it etched in the readers' minds.

Tista Ray

#13. I teach 18- to 21-year-olds - the 'Harry Potter' generation. They grew up as voracious readers, reading books in this exploding genre. But at some point, I would love for them to give Umberto Eco or A.S. Byatt a try. I hope 'A Discovery of Witches' will serve as a kind of stepping-stone.

Deborah Harkness

#14. It is not my intention to explain Turkey, its culture and its problems. My literature has a universal concern: I want to bring people and their emotions closer to my readers, not explain Turkish politics.

Orhan Pamuk

#15. As an author, I want to write what I'm inspired to write. Not what my readers want me to write. I feel like the books will ultimately be better if my heart is fully into what I'm writing.

Colleen Hoover

#16. Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.

Samuel Johnson

#17. ...in the middle of the field, Harry suddenly stopped and looked back. Mr. Chad was all alone in the creepy woods. He could take care of himself...couldn't he? Of course he could, he was a teacher.

Connie Kingrey Anderson

#18. When readers close the covers on 'Running the Rift,' I want them to understand that it is not a genocide novel but rather a story of hope and rebirth.

Naomi Benaron

#19. In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

W. H. Auden

#20. Sometimes I have to compromise my views, but I never compromise on issues like the death penalty and the arm trade laws, despite what the readers or letters may say.

Jonathan Shapiro

#21. A writer draws a road map where readers walks with their love, joy, anger, tears, and dismay. Every story, every poem, has different meanings for every reader.

Debasish Mridha

#22. I've never thought about the ages of my readers.

David Macaulay

#23. Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.

Arthur Conan Doyle

#24. I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.

Morris Gleitzman

#25. People have told me that they cannot put down 'If I Stay' after reading it, and readers have become very invested in the love story between Adam and Mia.

Gayle Forman

#26. With many readers, brilliancy of style passes for affluence of thought; they mistake buttercups in the grass for immeasurable gold mines under ground.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#27. My dream is to try to reach as many kids and readers who might need an unlikely hero to connect to.

Tim Federle

#28. I'm probably the most loquacious author when it comes to my dedications. The reason is there is some symbolism there. I've been writing these books, bringing these stories to my readers who I love so much, and I have a greater love for my family.

Karen Kingsbury

#29. Like JJ Abrams, creators just want to tell a story and entertain people. So why only focus in one way of telling it?Give readers another way to connect with your story. Entertainment does not need to be contained in one medium. Think about telling your story in many mediums.

Anne-Rae Vasquez

#30. Writers without readers is like a doctor without patients.

Britt Holewinski

#31. If I use the word 'khichdi' in my novel, I don't have to get into the trouble of explaining that it is a dish of rice and lentils. My Indian readers know it.

Ashwin Sanghi

#32. I find myself through my readers; I understand what I wrote when I see that others understand it too.

Paulo Coelho

#33. There are as many versions of a book as there are readers.

Matt Haig

#34. When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers have seen.

Haruki Murakami

#35. My goal is to invite readers to think along with me and draw their own conclusions.

Meghan Daum

#36. I believe we should spend less time worrying about the quantity of books children read and more time introducing them to quality books that will turn them on to the joy of reading and turn them into lifelong readers.

James Patterson

#37. A magical blending of mystery, romance, and deep and dangerous secrets. Kelly Parra's Invisible Touch is an action-packed coming-of-age novel, sure to keep readers turning pages and begging for a sequel.

Laurie Faria Stolarz

#38. Authors do not own books, readers do

John Green

#39. Readers have told me that their children have learned to read after years of struggle after starting to read Garfield's comic strip and many people who have moved to the United States have said that they, too, learned English by reading Garfield.

Jim Davis

#40. Our best moral stories don't tell us what is right or wrong in every situation, but they show us what one character did in one situation at one time. Readers, viewers, and listeners are supposed to extrapolate the moral meaning from the story. We're not supposed to have it handed to us.

Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

#41. I eat, breath and sleep and that makes me like everyone else. When I write, I become something much greater than flesh & bone; something that will stay behind long after that part of me is gone. Writing makes me special, readers make me everlasting.

C.K. Webb

#42. I welcome reviews from all readers. I take criticism well; but please ... no comments on my author face!

C.C. Alma

#43. I think we in journalism were really late to social networks. We had a built-in network already in terms of our readers, and we didn't capitalize on that.

Nicholas Kristof

#44. Readers have the power that professors pretend they wield. Millions of words of professorial contempt have failed to kill Kipling. Praising Shaw to the skies has been vain.

Gene Wolfe

#45. The romance genre is the only genre where readers are guaranteed novels that place the heroine at the heart of the story. These are books that celebrate women's heroic virtues and values: courage, honor, determination and a belief in the healing power of love.

Jayne Ann Krentz

#46. The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.

Seth Godin

#47. I'd like to set a story in Australia, but I would need to feel confident my German and U.S. readers, for example, would stay with me.

Michael Robotham

#48. A lot of its readers are of an age where they forget to cancel.

Jerry Della Femina

#49. "Best in the world," "lowest price in existence, " etc are at best claiming the expected. But superlative of that sort are usually damaging. They suggestion looseness of expression, a tendency to exaggerate, a careless truth. They lead readers to discount all the statements that you make

Claude C. Hopkins

#50. It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.

Larry Niven

#51. It was always clear to me that I would have to earn my readers, some I would have to find, some to create.

Aleksandar Hemon

#52. Writing with a simplified alphabet checked the power of custom of an oral tradition but implied a decline in the power of expression and the creation of grooves which determined the channels of thought of readers and later writers.

Harold Innis

#53. Thanks to you guys and girls who read my stuff, too. May you have long days and pleasant nights.

Stephen King

#54. Sex appeal was the "spoonful of sugar" that helped the "medicine" of feminism go down. A liberated heroine who still looked sexy would be less threatening to the male readers of comic books.

Mike Madrid

#55. For better or worse, whether it is a sign of aesthetic complexity or of intellectual indecision, this novel [Frankenstein] offers equally fertile ground to those readers who like their meanings ambiguous and indeterminate and to those who prefer to discern a deeply important doctrine.

Richard T. Nash

#56. Other kids' parents wouldn't let them read magazines like 'Weird Tales,' but my folks were big readers themselves, so they didn't mind.

Robert Weinberg

#57. So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners; it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.

Pliny The Younger

#58. A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.

Pat Conroy

#59. As readers can probably tell from my books, I love the outdoors.

Sharon Creech

#60. Beginning hook readers. Endings create fans.

Martha Alderson

#61. I figure I write for people who are intelligent enough to do some labor. Lazy readers are not my ideal readers.

Rigoberto Gonzalez

#62. If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book.

Ayn Rand

#63. Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.

Ashwin Sanghi

#64. Writers of literature, if they are real writers, know that their readers are confused about reality and the emotions derived from that reality and are looking for clarity concerning the life that they are engulfed in.

Noah Cicero

#65. Digital-Original publishing embraces the non-conventional and genre-busting story. It allows me to share good stories with readers who will enjoy them, and at a reasonable price.

Michael A. Stackpole

#66. My relationship with my readers is somewhat theatrical. One of the main things I try to do in my work is delight my readers.

Mark Leyner

#67. This book is dedicated to the many readers in this and in other countries who write to me asking: 'What has happened to Tommy and Tuppence? What are they doing now?' My best wishes to you all, and I hope you will enjoy meeting Tommy and Tuppence again, years older, but with spirit unquenched!

Agatha Christie

#68. The easiest emotions for an author to evoke from readers are boredom and confusion.

Raul Ramos Y Sanchez

#69. Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness.

Bell Hooks

#70. Only a true reader will understand how lovely it is to read a book on rainy days.

Nicholaa Spencer

#71. Point-of-view is a matter that readers rarely pay attention to, yet it's one of the most important story decisions an author makes.

Therese Fowler

#72. Readers will share in the environs of the author and her characters, be taken into the hardship of a pitiless place and emerge on the other side - wiser, warier and weathered like the landscape.

Antonya Nelson

#73. I meet a lot of readers who first encountered my work in school. And I can only assume there is another group who would run away very fast if they saw me coming, for exactly the same reason. Reading is individual, and not all tastes are alike.

Margaret Atwood

#74. Certain readers resented me when they could no longer recognize their territory, their institution.

Jacques Derrida

#75. Even if I only had 10 readers, I'd rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.

Daniel Clowes

#76. A. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.

Cynthia Ozick

#77. No really, Lainey. Give it a chance. Millions of readers can't be wrong."
"That's like saying millions of boy-band fans can't be wrong," I mutter, but I flip through a few more pages.

Paula Stokes

#78. Readers and authors are both trapped and empowered by the logos

Mark O. Keen

#79. I feel that historical novelists owe it to our readers to try to be as historically accurate as we can with the known facts. Obviously, we have to fill in the blanks. And then in the final analysis, we're drawing upon our own imaginations. But I think that readers need to be able to trust an author.

Sharon Kay Penman

#80. Writers whose thoughts are expressed with clarity and precision are assumed by readers to be superficial. Where the meaning is obscured, then readers give more attention and consider the fruit of their labour more valuable

Friedrich Nietzsche

#81. Readers want to have the confidence that you understand the era in which the book is set, so for 'The Perfumer's Secret,' I needed to know everything about the First World War from a French perspective. I had to understand those people and that town in 1914.

Fiona McIntosh

#82. I love doing readings. I could really give a crap about reviews. It's kind of about the readers.

Jami Attenberg

#83. The early development of speed reading can be traced to the beginning of the (20th) century, when the publication explosion swamped readers with more than they could possibly handle at normal reading rates.

Tony Buzan

#84. You don't want to lose the foreign feel of a book entirely, but for me the prime requisite is to get it sounding good in English. If it sounds clumsy, readers will pounce on it of course.

Anthea Bell

#85. James II's second wife, an Italian Catholic princess called Mary (at the time, there was an edict whereby all female royals were to be called Mary to confuse future readers of history books),

Stephen Clarke

#86. Let your story grow. Let it surprise you, and it will certainly surprise your readers.

M. Kirin

#87. Readers are paramount. I live to write books for them.

Jeffery Deaver

#88. I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.

Wislawa Szymborska

#89. Shirley Jackson enjoyed notoriety and commercial success within her lifetime, and yet it still hardly seems like enough for a writer so singular. When I meet readers and other writers of my generation, I find that mentioning her is like uttering a holy name.

Victor LaValle

#90. If poems very different from my own bring pleasure to a group of readers, who am I to say that the poems should have been written differently?

James Arthur

#91. While editors and newspaper owners currently fret over shrinking readership and lost profits, they do the one thing that insures cutting their own throats; they keep reducing space for the one feature that attracts new young readers in the first place; the comic strips.

Elayne Boosler

#92. You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.

Carl Hiaasen

#93. I've been thinking so much about writing as a gift to readers - and how newness of subject (place or topic or person) is one of the biggest gifts at our disposal.

Leslie Jamison

#94. And before any Christian readers get all offended - relax. I'm not saying that I'm the new Jesus. I'm just saying there's a very good chance that I might be.

Danny Wallace

#95. Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Salman Rushdie

#96. Every book begins and ends with other people- the readers who suggest the book to us and encourage us to read it, the talented author who crafted each word, the fascinating individuals we meet inside the pages- and the readers we discuss and share the book with when we finish.

Donalyn Miller

#97. Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.

C.S. Lewis

#98. Book marketing is like opening doors for your readers to find you, not a stick you hit them with.

Heather Hart

#99. I do not think that a flight across the Atlantic will be made in our time, and in our time I include the youngest readers.

Charles Rolls

#100. I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.

Caroline B. Cooney