Top 100 Reader Quotes
#1. Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.
Augusten Burroughs
#2. I'm not a masochistic reader. If something is just too dense or not enjoyable, even though I'm told it should be good for me, I'll put it down. That said, most of what I read would be considered high-end or good for you, I suppose. But, I also think that reading should be enjoyable.
Josh Radnor
#3. Books are a weird collaboration between author and reader: You trust me to tell a good story, and I trust you to bring it to good life in your mind.
John Green
#4. Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters.
Umberto Eco
#5. Emily wondered whether Artie would be so carefree if he knew The Book Club was performing grand theft imagination.
S.A. Tawks
#7. I'm 52 years old, which means I'm of an age where my reading habits are more or less set. I read plenty of stuff on line but I rely on pretty traditional sources. I'm a newspaper reader, whether in hand or on my iPad.
Michael Wilbon
#8. You have very short travel blogs, and I think there's a split among travel writers: the service-oriented writers will say, 'Well, the reader wants to read about his trip, not yours.' Whereas I say, the reader just wants to read a good story and to maybe learn something.
Tim Cahill
#9. Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.
George A. Sheehan
#10. We love books because they are the greatest escape. That is because our own minds eye is the purest form of virtual reality.
M.R. Mathias
#11. Robert Frost said, No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
Kim Addonizio
#12. 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.
Stephen King
#13. I think music, like writing, can be a mirror. Can turn back onto the listener, the viewer, the reader, an experience that they know but they don't know.
Claudia Rankine
#14. Risk is important to me as a writer, reader, and editor. I love stories that take a premise or style that seems unlikely to succeed, whose first paragraphs risk a raised eyebrow or groan, and whose last paragraphs are then all that much sweeter a triumph. Basically, I love being proved wrong.
Caitlin Horrocks
#15. Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.
Bernard Malamud
#16. The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.
Billy Collins
#17. I ought to be able to invent words capable of blowing the odor of corpses in a direction other than straight into mine and the reader's face.
Franz Kafka
#18. I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent that the reader would forget that language was the medium of understanding. Of course that's not possible, but it's some sort of idealized goal.
Paul Auster
#19. In my books and in romance as a genre, there is a positive, uplifting feeling that leaves the reader with a sense of encouragement and hope for a brighter future - or a brighter present.
Debbie Macomber
#20. [L]et my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch ...
Shirley Jackson
#21. I've been a massive obsessive about jazz singers all my life.
Eddi Reader
#22. Sometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.
John M. Ford
#23. The problem lies not with the characters within the novel, but with the reader itself.
Vladimir Nabokov
#24. Give the reader what they want, just not the way they expect it.
William Goldman
#26. The character's flaw will shape every other aspect of your book. The flaw is the engine that drives your entire book, from hooking your reader's interest to propelling the plot to its climax - so choose your flaw with care, and make it count.
Libbie Hawker
#27. He tells his reader that writings should be expounded in four senses. The first
Dante Alighieri
#28. I don't have a disregard for my reader in humor pieces.
Ian Frazier
#29. Fictional characters exist in only two places, neither of which is on the printed page. They exist, first, in the mind of the writer and, second, in the mind of the reader.
Maren Elwood
#30. The difference between a story and an essay is that the storyteller just wants to entertain the reader, while the essayist has been to graduate school.
Dinty W. Moore
#31. Tides is a rich, taut, suspenseful, and funny exploration of two worlds, selkie and human. It's full of mystery but it's also so fully imagined that a reader can jump right in. Betsy Cornwell is a terrific new talent with a boundless imagination.
Valerie Sayers
#32. Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.
Dani Shapiro
#33. If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class.
George Orwell
#34. He who combines the useful and the pleasing wins out by both instructing and delighting the reader. That is the sort of book that will make money for the publisher, cross the seas, and extend the fame of the author.
Horace
#35. There has to be insight born of hindsight. Otherwise, you're only confessing your sins and asking the reader to forgive you. And that is a complete misuse of the writer's power and unfair to the reader.
Meghan Daum
#36. I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.
Stephen King
#37. You've got to have high expectations to achieve top results.
S.A. Tawks
#39. The idea that certain things in life - and in the universe - don't yield up their secrets is something that requires a slightly more mature reader to accept.
Samuel R. Delany
#41. But in all things whether we shall make only a due use of the liberties we have asked, is left entirely to the judicious reader to decide.
Sarah Fielding
#42. It means they engineered the spirit to have a negative effect on the imagination.
S.A. Tawks
#43. CONTENTS Cover About the Book Title Page Colour First Reader Dedication Chapter
Jacqueline Wilson
#44. As a writer, you're making a pact with the reader; you're saying, 'Look, I know and you know that if this book was really a murder investigation, it would be a thousand pages long and would be very dull, and you would be very unhappy with the ending.'
Mark Billingham
#45. Good writing is difficult no matter what the reader's age-and children deserve the best.
Aaron Shepard
#46. I didn't like filtering the story through me, saying, 'Reader, you'll be safe with me. While it gets a little dangerous, it'll be okay because, after all, you're with me, because I'm a warm convivial voice. But let's be entertained by this horrible stuff.' I didn't like that.
Michael Winter
#47. The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious. [ ... ] First love is a momentous step in our emotional education, and in many ways, it shapes us forever.
Laura Miller
#48. Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink at the reader, never pull his punches. Better for him, better for me.
Donald E. Westlake
#49. Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
(advicetowriters)
George V. Higgins
#50. I'm an avid reader. Novels, non-fiction, comics, it doesn't matter. Best way in the world to feed your head.
Reid Scott
#51. As a writer, you must know what promise your story or novel makes. Your reader will know.
Nancy Kress
#52. One of the elements of writing that is most delightful to the engaged reader is the element of surprise. And one of the ways to surprise the reader is to set up an expectation that you then veer away from it at the last moment. A stitch in time saves the penny earned. Or something like that.
Douglas Wilson
#53. Imagine yourself in the scene. See what there is to be seen. Listen to the sounds. Touch the world. Smell the air. Taste it. Use all of your senses. Then evoke those experiences for the reader. If you give the audience the flavor, they'll flesh out the moment in their own imaginations.
David Gerrold
#54. Yet if strict criticism should till frown on our method, let candor and good humor forgive what is done to the best of our judgment, for the sake of perspicuity in the story and the delight and entertainment of our candid reader.
Sarah Fielding
#55. I'd always been a big reader. I credit my mom for giving me my love of reading.
Nicole Jordan
#56. A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
William Safire
#57. Remember Bacon's recommendation to the reader: Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Mortimer J. Adler
#58. The rules that I adhere to are the rules of minimalism. And those rules kind of force writing to be more filmic ... to have the immediacy and accessibility of film so that the reader really has to fill in a lot of the details.
Chuck Palahniuk
#59. 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
#60. Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
Akhil Sharma
#61. The idea is to spin the wheel of metaphors and images until sparks of associations begin to fly for the reader.
Charles Simic
#62. I'm a sporadic reader. I have moments when I can't stop ... then I kind of forget that I can read. But then I go, 'Oh God, yeah, books!'
Rhys Ifans
#63. Characters are supposed to have understandable motivations. The reader is supposed to be able to relate to them.
Aaron Starmer
#64. To speak truth, reader, there is no excellent beauty, no accomplished grace, no refinement, without strength as excellent, as complete, as trustworthy.
Charlotte Bronte
#65. Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing.
Kevin Powers
#66. I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four.
Jim Lehrer
#67. Fairy tales are the skeletons of story, perhaps. Reading them often provides an uneasy sensation - a gnawing familiarity - that comforting yet supernatural awareness of living inside a story.
Kate Bernheimer
#68. What neither the reader nor Stone would accept was that his self-amputation was as much and act of conceit as it was an act of heroism p 61
Abraham Verghese
#69. ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection.
Ambrose Bierce
#70. By all means be experimental, but let the reader be part of the experiment
W.G. Sebald
#71. Reading is a private act, private even from the person who wrote the book. Once the novel is out there, the author is beside the point. The reader and the book have their own relationship now, and should be left alone to work things out for themselves.
Ann Patchett
#72. As a reader, I don't feel a story has an obligation to make me happy. I want stories to show me a bigger world than the one I know.
John Green
#73. Reading is a choice. The will to do depends the reader. We may or may not do it but when we kill reading, we kill a purposeful mind. Reading a page of a purposeful book per day is not only a great medicine to the mind but also a powerful antidote to ignorance and mediocrity
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#74. Semicolons ... signal, rather than shout, a relationship ... A semicolon is a compliment from the writer to the reader. It says: "I don't have to draw you a picture; a hint will do."
George Will
#75. To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.
David Foster Wallace
#76. To me, the writer's main job is to just make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared - she's right there, seeing things happen and caring about them. And if you dedicate yourself to this job, the meanings more or less take care of themselves. That's the theory, anyway.
George Saunders
#77. The stories books tell transcend those of the characters inked upon their pages. A book discloses far more about the person who reads it.
Kelseyleigh Reber
#78. Tales of triumph are my favourite.
S.A. Tawks
#79. The surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definitive, and concrete. The greatest writers - Homer, Dante, Shakespeare - are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their words call up pictures.
William Strunk Jr.
#80. The editor self thinks only of saving the reader time and shaping a powerful emotional experience.
Mary Karr
#81. What is missed when people talk about books is the moment of grace when the reader creates the book, lends it the authority of their life and soul. The books I love are me, have become me.
Richard Flanagan
#82. It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the reader's opportunities to follow it at every step.
Harry Mathews
#83. I grew up writing thank-you notes. Real, honest-to-goodness, pen-and-ink, stamped and posted letters. More than simple habit, it's about what the commitment to expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing says about the character of the writer. About the joy such notes bring to the reader.
Taylor Mali
#84. Even a casual reader of the financial pages knows that microcaps are a perennial headache for regulators and, above all, for investors because they have been prone to abuse by stock manipulators.
Gary Weiss
#85. If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories.
Italo Calvino
#86. An able reader often discovers in other people's writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.
Michel De Montaigne
#87. Take my hand, Constant Reader, and I'll be happy to lead you back into the sunshine. I'm happy to go there, because I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of. Bangor,
Stephen King
#88. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
Henry David Thoreau
#89. There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.
Agnes Repplier
#90. I read things and imagine them and then kind of start trying to kind of take what I imagine and make it visual for everybody else to see. It just happens to be my personal vision, and every person's is going to be different, every book reader.
Mark Waters
#91. The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, Dear Reader, if you went back to the Living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here.
Don DeLillo
#92. It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.
Larry Niven
#93. 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
#94. A reader should know what he might reasonably expect under a particular label.
John Christopher
#95. There is nothing better fitted to delight the reader than change of circumstances and varieties of fortune.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#96. Online magazines such as Salon, Slate, and Suck, had already made an elementary discovery: a reader staring into the equivalent of a thirty-watt bulb didn't want to confront thousands of words. The medium required a little extra white space, a sort of oasis for the optic nerve.
James Marcus
#97. The first hit on the nervous system is the one I'm most interested in, because I think if you hit the reader emotionally, the reader can't guarantee the lessons they would like to learn.
Fred D'Aguiar
#98. Be sure to see that the first few pages have the reader on the edge of his seat, unable to put the book down. Most editors only have time to read a few pages before making a decision; make those pages memorable!
Judith Saxton
#99. Libraries have had a long history of dealing with authoritarian organizations demanding reader records - who's read what - and this has led to people being rounded up and killed.
Brewster Kahle
#100. If something's not working, it's wonderful to have a reader you can trust to say, 'Actually, you've gone off the deep end here'.
Siri Hustvedt
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