Quotes About Readers

#1. The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with readers. Maybe I'm writing one long narrative, and each book, however different from the last, is just a chapter.

Joanna Scott

#2. If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to the style of a translator, stop noticing it, and get caught up in the story.

Lydia Davis

#3. The Roman tyrant was content to be hated, if he was but feared; and there are thousands of the readers of romances willing to be thought wicked, if they may be allowed to be wits.

Samuel Johnson

#4. I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language, I expect them to have read books - there are a lot of people like that! That's my audience.

Alan Furst

#5. Let, therefore, pious readers learn to hate and detest those profane sophists, who thus deliberately corrupt and adulterate the Scriptures, in order that they may give some color to their delusions.

John Calvin

#6. All of my books have an element of a man who is in love with somebody and needs them desperately, not just for procreation but for being able to fully unbosom himself. He only feels comfortable discussing things with women. Which is funny, because 80 percent of readers are women!

Gary Shteyngart

#7. Except that awards are competitive, which is a negative thing, they are wonderful for singling out deserving individuals and bringing their work to the attention of many potential readers who might otherwise have been totally unaware of them.

Joyce Carol Oates

#8. My readers and my audiences have turned into my followers. They are more than interested in what I have to say in the subjects of sales, loyalty, attitude, networking, business social media, and becoming a trusted advisor.

Jeffrey Gitomer

#9. Great readers, great listeners, and all have great work ethics ... They work hard at what they do and they're devout to their reading and listening.

Andy Wilkinson

#10. I've dealt with depression my entire life, on and off, which makes me the perfect author for teenage readers.

Laurie Halse Anderson

#11. It is the mess that readers love. The fact that sometimes the people who love us the most aren't people we're related to, but people who join our family later. The book acknowledges how difficult family relationship are, and this fuss just proves it.

Kristine Grayson

#12. Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that's their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.

Yann Martel

#13. You do not know, and the readers cannot tell you, what they might like until they have it. It is one of those things that particularly if you want to be the next wave, well the next wave is not already on the bestseller lists. The next wave is in somebody's head.

Stephanie Laurens

#14. Don't worry about how pretty (the story) sounds, how lilting it is, and the imagery, and the metaphor, all that. Most readers don't care. It's the people in your book that matter.

Terry McMillan

#15. My publishers, two Catalan brothers with an inherited income, took me out to lunch to inform me that the first print run would be only five hundred copies. Five hundred readers? I accept! And the lunch was delicious.

Francine Prose

#16. 'Rescue Me' is the first book in a three-book series. Although, like all my series, the books are purposely written so that readers do not have to read them in order.

Rachel Gibson

#17. My mission as a writer is to give my readers hope to carry with them, and to promote a belief that they can do anything they set their minds to.

Wendelin Van Draanen

#18. Life might be stranger than fiction, but fiction allows many writers to more accurately portray life to their readers.

Jaime Buckley

#19. I find my readers to be very smart, and there is no reason to write dumb.

Amy Bloom

#20. The understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited.

Evelyn Waugh

#21. Many, many readers have written asking me wistfully about the nature of Sam and Grace's relationship, and I can assure you, that sort is absolutely real. Mutual, respectful, enduring love is completely attainable as long as you swear you won't settle for less.

Maggie Stiefvater

#22. Critics are biased, and so are readers. (Indeed, a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers soon discover how to allow for the windage of their own and a critic's prejudices.

Whitney Balliett

#23. I've lived on royalties all my life. It is the readers who have supported me.

Ba Jin

#24. Readers travel so fast they don't stop to decipher the meaning of obscure headlines.

David Ogilvy

#25. I've been a traveller, but I don't travel so much now. I'm trying to do it vicariously through my writing. I'm trying to write books that will draw readers away from their lives but send them back in a more awakened way.

Steven Heighton

#26. In all my writings I have always tried - how far successfully I know not - to advance the cause of Truth and Right and to induce my readers to put their trust in the love of God our Saviour, for this life as well as the life to come.

R.M. Ballantyne

#27. Many readers share their stories with me and if one speaks to me (or if the same theme keeps coming at me), I will research it and decide if it would make a good book. But, straight down to it, people inspire me.

Ellen Hopkins

#28. 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 ...

James Patterson

#29. Books are fun, Nicholas, he says,
they're like
amusement parks
for readers.

Yeah, well, maybe
they would be fun
if I got to pick
the rides
sometimes, you answer

Kwame Alexander

#30. I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.

Dean Koontz

#31. I struggle with confidence, every time. I'm never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won't want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it.

Barbara Kingsolver

#32. Beyond the offer tables and online bestseller charts are many other narratives: books that take readers away from what they know, challenge the assumptions that underpin life elsewhere and present a strikingly different world ["How Books Get Lost In translation," Financial Times, January 15, 2015].

Ann Morgan

#33. My hope is that each of the villains I write will have his or her own motivation that readers can understand, whether they agree or disagree.

Cullen Bunn

#34. Because of the nature of my brand, it's so important our readers know it really is me behind my keyboard.

Brit Morin

#35. In hard-core science fiction in which characters are responding to a change in environment, caused by nature or the universe or technology, what readers want to see is how people cope, and so the character are present to cope, or fail to cope.

James Gunn

#36. Good writing is a mirror of the mind where readers can see themselves again and again.

Debasish Mridha

#37. I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.

Jennifer McMahon

#38. 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?

Paulo Coelho

#39. It should come as no surprise to readers of the MAPS Bulletin that psychedelic plants are used as a sacrament by many native cultures all over the world. It may not be so obvious that these same plants are often incorporated into the coming-of-age ceremonies of these various societies.

Rick Doblin

#40. Like many readers, I am continually in search of books that allow me to lose myself in an entirely unique universe.

Anita Shreve

#41. I don't do epilogues. I hate epilogues. It's like nailing the coffin shut on the story, allowing for no further growth and leaving no room for the readers' imaginations.

Rick Riordan

#42. Teenagers are the greatest readers in the world - honest, unsnobby and loyal

Patrick Ness

#43. For the record, and those readers oblivious to metaphor, I would have avoided the subject entirely if my wife did not assure me I was of average size, an opinion as comforting as it is troublesome, because I know how much research she's done first hand. From the chapter, "Small Penis Rule".

Ira Wood

#44. I think that's a hallmark of a really good story that it has readers that it speaks to more than others.

Erin Morgenstern

#45. To those readers who feel that I didn't know any better, I assert that I did ... but the temptation was simply too great to resist.

Stephen King

#46. All the marketing and advertising sells the book as what it is and hopes that the book will be displayed so that your readers can find it.

M.J. Rose

#47. I think it's our job as writers for Marvel Comics to continue to create those type of stories that can be mined instead of just trying to give readers exactly what they see on film.

Jason Aaron

#48. Rowling is a luminous storyteller. I love her sense of humor and the intricate wizarding world she built around Hogwarts. I think all writers aspire to be like her, to capture readers like she does. But I didn't think about 'Harry Potter' when I wrote 'The Bone Season.'

Samantha Shannon

#49. Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it.

Khaled Hosseini

#50. Cutting words can cut your readers but if the intention is pure, the story will resonate loud and true.

Veronica Purcell

#51. I was able to accomplish pretty much everything I set out to do with my run on Superman, and I'm really proud of how it turned out. I hope that readers enjoyed it, too!

Chris Roberson

#52. Why use long words when short ones will do? Not all readers have been to college or university.

Ken Scott

#53. Lifelong readers continue to read, finding in books the means to enjoy life or endure it

Samuel L. Jackson

#54. You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don't labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers

Horace

#55. As a writer, I have readers who will have a range of political views. I don't think they look to me for political guidance.

Alexander McCall Smith

#56. A solid 90 percent of my readers are teenage girls. You are a force. You influence art and fashion and culture. You're eight different kinds of cool. You get overlooked far too much, but my 17 year old soul loves you endlessly.

Kiera Cass

#57. I love the process of creating a story that will resonate in my readers lives ~ either inspiring them, educating them, or entertaining them.

Kathryn Albright

#58. If the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions.

Jorge Luis Borges

#59. Pulls readers in with an ironic, breezy portrait of sinister high school competitiveness. Deft and extraordinarily accomplished.

Michael Cadnum

#60. Correction of Earlier Entry: 8/01/12
We read over the shoulders of giants; books place us in dialogue not just with an author but with other readers.

Leah Price

#61. To all the readers,
whom despite
the attraction of tv,
of internet,
of family troubles,
of video games,
of sport,
of night clubs,
have found some hours
so we can all dream together.

Bernard Werber

#62. Limited points of view let the writer dispense - and the reader gather - information from various corners of the story. It all becomes a kind of dance, with the writer guiding the reader through the various twists and turns. The challenge is keeping readers in step, while still managing to surprise.

Jonathan Evison

#63. There are certain things in 'Twilight' ... As much as I'm proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it's a first-person narrative.

Kristen Stewart

#64. I think instead writers and publishers and readers need to go to the places where people are, and make the argument that there is great value to the quiet, contemplative process of reading a novel, that reading great books carefully offers pleasures and consolations that no iPad app ever can.

John Green

#65. You used to write such honest books. Honest and emotionally ambitious. Maybe they weren't finding millions of readers. Maybe they weren't making you rich. But they were making the world rich

Jonathan Safran Foer

#66. The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

Harold Bloom

#67. Maybe you have billions of dollars and my Hugo, but you don't have readers like these.

George R R Martin

#68. Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.

Fran Lebowitz

#69. Good readers make much out of little.

Irving Howe

#70. The sun shines. Readers read.

Roderick Townley

#71. We binge on instant knowledge, but we are learning the hazards, and readers are warier than they used to be of nanosecond-interpretations of Supreme Court decisions.

Evan Osnos

#72. I love meeting readers and booksellers and am beyond overwhelmed and gratified at the reception. Each day feels like an adventure.

John Corey Whaley

#73. I write not for sensation, but for Truth. I leave judgement to the hearts of my good Readers everywhere.

David Ebershoff

#74. I wanted to give readers the feeling of knowing the characters, a mental image.

Michael Chabon

#75. Wait until you get inside. It's my favorite part.' And yes, gentle readers, I am that fucking smooth.

C.J. Roberts

#76. Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victims of books.

Holly Black

#77. Just as a fighter has to feel that he possesses the right to do physical damage to another man, so a writer has to be ready to take chances with his readers' lives.

Norman Mailer

#78. I think it's one of the Times' problems that they haven't made it clear to readers what various formats mean.

Daniel Okrent

#79. To me, the print business model is so simple, where readers pay a dollar for all the content within, and that supports the enterprise.

Dave Eggers

#80. I have had a lot of readers of my book tell me that they like it, but so far only two reviews have been listed. Could you help?

Rollis Fontenot Jr

#81. Even non-commercial media rely on transferring cost to users through licence fees, donations from listeners, viewers, or readers, or grants from companies and foundations that have wrestled their funds from the public in some form of earlier commercial activity.

Robert G. Picard

#82. Don't market yourself. Editors and readers don't know what they want until they see it. Scratch what itches. Write what you need to write, feed the hunger for meaning in your life. Play at the serious questions of life and death.

Donald Murray

#83. The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

Robert Morgan

#84. We talk about a free press. These people hide, they make a lot of money off the media. They hide behind the slogans of free press, and then they can come out with crap like that. It's just garbage. It's insulting to the readers.

Robert Scheer

#85. Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.

Ben Okri

#86. If the atmosphere is to be foreboding, you must forebode on every page. If it is to be cold, you must chill, not once or twice, but until your readers are shivering.

Jerome Stern

#87. We consume everything like potato chips. In this environment, I suspect the cartoonist's connection with readers is likely to be superficial and fleeting, unless he taps into some fervent special interest niche. And that audience, almost by definition, will be tiny.

Bill Watterson

#88. Don't send out a newsletter just to send out a newsletter. One newsletter a year that is really interesting is more beneficial than 12 that are boring. If you write two or three boring newsletters in a row, your readers will start to think you write boring books.

M.J. Rose

#89. Even now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.

Chetan Bhagat

#90. Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words - the words live on for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered.

J. Michael Straczynski

#91. Readers want what is important to be clearly laid out; they will not read what is too troublesome.

Jan Tschichold

#92. 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

W.E.B. Du Bois

#93. ... it would even be inexact to say that I thought of those who read it as readers of my book. Because they were not, as I saw it, my readers. More exactly they were readers of themselves, my book being a sort of magnifying glass ... by which I could give them the means to read within themselves.

Marcel Proust

#94. Sometimes people ask if my books have morals or lessons for readers, and I shudder at that thought. I always say that I have more questions than answers.

Robin Hobb

#95. By middle school, students have an image of themselves as readers or nonreaders. Students who do not read see reading as a talent that they do not have rather than as an attainable skill.

Donalyn Miller

#96. As a writer, it's important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God.

Amish Tripathi

#97. Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.

Melvin Maddocks

#98. You have to believe, in the deepest part of your soul, that it is a good thing for readers to buy and read your book.

Tim Grahl

#99. I think, above all, the characters in my novels feel universal to the readers.

Nicholas Sparks

#100. Readers the world over are always so let down that Hogwarts and Narnia and Middle Earth don't exist, that they will never be able to visit their favorite fictional places.

E. Lorn