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Reader Quotes

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Reader Quotes

“The truth is, everything ultimately comes down to the relationship between the reader and the writer and the characters. Does or does not a character address moral being in a universal and important way? If it does, then it's literature.”

Ifs Way Doe Important Character Literature Moral Reader Truth Is Universal Addresses

Author:Whitley Strieber

“We must be forewarned that only rarely does a text easily lend itself to the reader's curiosity... the reading of a text is a transaction between the reader and the text, which mediates the encounter between the reader and writer. It is a composition between the reader and the writer in which the reader "rewrites" the text making a determined effort not to betray the author's spirit.”

Doe Spirit Reading Effort Learning Reader Curiosity Determined Encounters Betray Composition Transactions Forewarned

Author:Paulo Freire

“A reader does not suddenly comprehend what is being read or studied, in a snap, miraculously. Comprehension needs to be worked forged, by those who read and study; as subjects of the action, they must seek to employ appropriate instruments in order to carry out the task. For this very reason, reading and studying form a challenging task, one requiring patience and perseverance.”

Source: Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those who Dare Teach

“When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.”

Knows Doe Opportunity Interesting Development Reader Suspense Plot Shifting Get Real Really Interesting Narrators

Author:Sara Zarr

“The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative. By their fewness, and by the importance of the reader’s eye, this will be misunderstood by most of that minority which does not wholly ignore it. In the interests, however, of the history and future of photography, that risk seems irrelevant, and this flat statement necessary.”

Doe Seems Eye Interest Risk Reader Photography Importance Independent Photographer Photograph Statements Minorities Flats Irrelevant Misunderstood

Author:Walker Evans

“Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader.”

People Doe America Individual Nations Class Reader Universal Absolutes Presses Newspapers Poorest Universal Education

Book:The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more

Source: The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more

“The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.”

Knows Should Littles Doe Has Beens Made Book Real Self Reason Character Stories Hands Might Faces Fun Reader Picks Familiar Factors Spots Titles Referencing Familiar Faces Book Titles

Author:Charles de Lint

“A big 'thank you' to George Demetrion for helping readers see that the center does hold. A wise and winsome work.”

Doe Helping Bigs Wise Reader Winsome

Author:Gabriel Fackre

“The question so often asked of modern painting, "What is it?", contains more than the dull skepticism of the man who is not going to have the wool pulled over his eyes. It speaks of a fundamental placement in relation to the work, that of a voyager in the world coming upon a strange object. The reader reconstitutes the work by his active participation, by approaching the object, tapping it, shaking it, holding it to his ear to hear the roaring within. It is characteristic of the object that it does not declare itself all at once, in a rush of pleasant naïveté.”

“There is (gentle reader) nothing (the works of God only set apart) which so much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind of man as does knowledge of the good arts and sciences . Many arts there are which beautify the mind of man; but of all none do more garnish and beautify it than those arts which are called mathematical , unto the knowledge of which no man can attain, without perfect knowledge and instruction of the principles, grounds, and Elements of Geometry.”

Men Mind Doe Art Soul Perfect Principles Reader Elements Mathematical Gentle Instruction Geometry Art And Science Good Art

Author:John Dee

“Le lecteur, lui non plus, ne voit pas les choses du dehors. Il est dans le labyrinthe aussi. The reader [as well as the main character] does not view the work from outside. He too is in the labyrinth.”

Wells Doe Character Views Reader Plus Labyrinth Main Characters

Author:Alain Robbe-Grillet

“There is no ideal length, but you develop a little interior gauge that tells you whether or not you're supporting the house or detracting from it. When a piece gets too long, the tension goes out of it. That wordtensionhas an animal insistence for me. A piece of writing rises and falls with tension. The writer holds one end of the rope and the reader holds the other endis the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?”

Writing Littles Long Doe Ends Matter Fall Next House Animal Pieces Reader Ideals Sentences Tension Length Interiors Rope Insistence Gauges Rise And Fall Does It Matter

Author:John Jeremiah Sullivan

“If the writer does not cry, the reader does not cry.”

Ifs Doe Cry Reader

Author:Robert Frost

“As far as I know, Clifford Pickover is the first mathematician to write a book about areas where math and theology overlap. Are there mathematical proofs of God? Who are the great mathematicians who believed in a deity? Does numerology lead anywhere when applied to sacred literature? Pickover covers these and many other off-trail topics with his usual verve, humor, and clarity. And along the way the reader will learn a great deal of serious mathematics.”

“The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants.”

Source: The collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“To me, a poem is almost like someone whispering to another person, or you hear the whispering in your head. I hope with my own poems that the reader feels a connection, soul to soul, that'll help us all feel a little less alone on the planet. And it does have the power to direct change. A writer can make the word 'dark' be something positive. You can relieve a word like 'hysterical' of its misogynistic implications. You can make the language your own. That's what poetry is about.”

Feels Littles Persons Doe Soul Helping Language Dark My Own Planets Reader Direct Connections Poetry Is Implications Whispering Hysterical

Author:Rita Dove

“To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut.”

“One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.”

Wells Doe Made Said Two Reality Language Common Written Objects Poet Perspective Reader Honor Demand Unique Significant Two Things Validity Poetry By Famous Poets Unique Perspective

Author:W. H. Auden

“Not to make him blush, but any story illustrated by Mike Mignola does things that prose alone cant accomplish. The illustrations create mood and atmosphere, drawing the reader more deeply into the story than words could do on their own.”

Doe Stories Reader Accomplish Drawing Mood Atmosphere Prose Cant Mike Illustration

Author:Christopher Golden

“I feel like I owe it to the readers to try to pull back the veil and give them the honest version of what's going on. But it's not more fun. If Obama, as he does sometimes already, gets a little snippy with me about something I've written, you're thinking, 'Oh God, the president of the United States is already annoyed with me.'”

Ifs Thinking Giving Feels Trying Littles Doe Sometimes States Fun President United United States Written Honest Reader Versions Veils Annoyed

Author:Maureen Dowd

“I personally have a great deal of respect for readers. I have a great deal of respect for the human race. I think most people can tell the difference between fiction and fact. I think that the action of writing about something does not condone it. The best thing I can ever hope to do is provide good questions, and I think I do that. I hope I do.”

People Thinking Writing Humans Doe I Can Facts Action Differences Deals Race Fiction Reader Best Things Human Race Good Questions

Author:Neil Gaiman

“The unlucky hand dealt to clear and precise writers is that people assume they are superficial and so do not go to any trouble inreading them: and the lucky hand dealt to unclear ones is that the reader does go to some trouble and then attributes the pleasure he experiences in his own zeal to them.”

People Doe Hands Reading Pleasure Clear Trouble Reader Lucky Assuming Attributes Superficial Precise Zeal Unlucky Unclear

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“Theoretically, we know that the world turns, but in fact we do not notice it, the earth on which we walk does not seem to move andwe live on in peace. This is how it is concerning Time in our lives. And to render its passing perceptible, novelists must... have their readers cross ten, twenty, thirty years in two minutes.”

Knows World Years Doe Two Facts Seems Earth Moving Time Turns Reading Walks Our Lives Minutes Reader Ten Crosses Twenties Passing Passings Novelists Thirty Thirty Years

Author:Marcel Proust

“The way in which the photograph records experience is also different from the way of language. Language makes sense only when it is presented as a sequence of propositions. Meaning is distorted when a word or sentence is, as we say, taken out of context; when a reader or listener is deprived of what was said before, and after. But there is no such thing as a photograph taken out of context, for a photograph does not require one. In fact, the point of photography is to isolate images from context, so as to make them visible in a different way.”

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other; and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.”

Writing Doe Reader Fortune Ugly Foolish Mates Ugly Women

Book:The letters of Horace Walpole, earl of Orford

Source: The letters of Horace Walpole, earl of Orford

“I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.”

Source: The Ascent to Truth

“[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 . . .”

Ifs Humans Doe Two Eye Sound Human Beings Consciousness Sea Minutes Reader Explanation His Eyes Awkward Puzzled Compact

Book:The Magic of Shirley Jackson

Source: The Magic of Shirley Jackson

“The analytical writer observes the reader as he is; accordingly, he makes his calculation, sets his machine to make the appropriate effect on him. The synthetic writer constructs and creates his own reader; he does not imagine him as resting and dead, but lively and advancing toward him. He makes that which he had invented gradually take shape before the reader's eyes, or he tempts him to do the inventing for himself. He does not want to make a particular effect on him, but rather enters into a solemn relationship of innermost symphilosophy or sympoetry.”

Want Doe Eye Literature Imagine Effects Particular Reader Shapes Machines Appropriate Constructs Solemn Calculations Lively Inventing Advancing Synthetic

Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

“A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same, to make them comfortable.”

Writing Doe Reader Comfortable Precaution

Book:A Burnt-Out Case

Source: A Burnt-Out Case

“The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader's attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him.”

Doe Has Beens Done Attention Violence Reader Perceive Plot Manipulation Load Dice

Author:W. Somerset Maugham

“An author never does more damage to his readers than when he hides a difficulty.”

Doe Reader Difficulty Damage

Author:Evariste Galois

“I think smart aggregation is a service to readers. And we do it, too ... . Whether it's a politics page and you want Dan Balz to tell you what is he reading, what does he think are the smartest articles today on the elections or the primaries. So, I think aggregation is great ... . So I'm all for aggregation. And the more eyeballs we can get to our content, the better. We do want readers to be educated and to understand the difference between, what is a source that you can trust as opposed to just rumors out there. And the difference between just repurposing content and not crediting it.”

Thinking Want Doe Today Reading Differences Source Reader Pages Smart Election Educated Primaries Articles Rumor Eyeballs

Author:Katharine Weymouth

“It's surprising that readers don't see challenging writing as morally hazardous, when it might be pushing the same kinds of boundaries as art does.”

Writing Kind Doe Art Might Challenges Reader Boundaries Pushing Surprising

Author:Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

“Ayn Rand held that art is a 're-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements.' By its nature, therefore, a novel (like a statue or a symphony) does not require or tolerate an explanatory preface; it is a self-contained universe, aloof from commentary, beckoning the reader to enter, perceive, respond.”

Doe Art Self Reality Artist Values Universe Novel Creation Reader Art Is Perceive Judgement Tolerate Metaphysical Statues Symphony Commentary Aloof Self Contained Beckoning

Author:Leonard Peikoff

“Liberals don't hate America. We love America more than Ann Coulter does. I love it enough to engage my readers honestly.”

Doe Enough America Hate Reader Honestly Don't Hate

Book:Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Source: Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

“The headline of an advertisement accounts for 60% of the pull of that ad. In the same way, the start of a letter makes or breaks the letter, because if the start does not interest your reader, he never gets down to the rest of your letter.”

Ifs Way Doe Interest Break Reader Letters Accounts Ads Headlines Advertisements Make Or Break

Author:Robert Collier

“I think in space or music or art or literature of any kind there has to be some kind of void where the viewer or the spectator or the listener or the reader can insert themselves into it, and there is a certain kind of architectural space which is totalitarian, which does not allow you to do that.”

Thinking Kind Doe Art Certain Literature Space Reader Void Listeners Viewers Spectators Insert

Author:Jonathan Meades

“"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.”

Looks Doe Made Ideas Dream Happens Novel Knowing Talent Type Reader I Realized Variety

Author:Meg Wolitzer

“Reading a poem is a real thing, a worthy thing. So to be there right with the reader at that moment is part of the effect of a title like "Poem for" something or other. Matt Rohrer does this a lot in his titles, and I think I might have gotten some of the idea to do this, or at least been reminded of how it can work, from his recent amazing books.”

Thinking Doe Book Ideas Real Moments Might Reading Effects Reader Worthy Titles That Moment Real Things Amazing Book Worthy Things

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“Love and happiness inextricably combined? I wanted love stories to coincide with war stories, I wanted hope for my characters, I wanted a sense of a future. So do they. So does the reader. But perhaps I shouldn't speak for everyone when I say that love and happiness are interdependent. In my own experience, happiness came with love. Specifically, my wife. That's when my own apathy and stasis ended for good.”

Doe War Character Stories Wanted Speak My Own Wife Reader My Wife Love Story Apathy Happiness And Love War Stories Stasis Wanted Love

Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh

“You sing about the things you're influenced by. So we've been big into sci-fi since we were kids, things like Star Trek etc. Then came movies like Terminator and Dune. Burton is also a really big reader and loves sci-fi novels which helps him write. It's also really cool he does that because it's through the perspective of how we see things going or possibly going.”

Writing Doe Helping Bigs Kids Stars Novel Perspective Reader And Love Etc Sci Fi Really Cool

Author:Dino Cazares

“Books never pall on me. They discourse with us, they take counsel with us, and are united to us by a certain living chatty familiarity. And not only does each book inspire the sense that it belongs to its readers, but it also suggests the name of others, and one begets the desire of the other.”

Life Doe Book Desire Certain Names United Inspire Reader Discourse Familiarity Begets

Author:Petrarch

“Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.”

Giving Writing Doe Pleasure Powerful Emotion Reader Never Giving Up Inspiring Writing

Author:Joseph Joubert

“I think it has as much to do with honoring my own voice as it does with feeling a responsibility to my readers or my daughters.”

Thinking Doe Feelings Voice My Own Responsibility Reader Daughter My Daughter

Author:Jennifer Weiner

“Then basically what was happening was that it was the middle '80s, and Rolling Stone realized that a lot of their readers had voted for [Ronald] Reagan, and they were going, "Gosh! We need a Republican! Does anybody know a Republican? Wait a minute! I think P.J.'s a Republican!"”

Thinking Knows Needs Doe Waiting Middle Minutes Reader Republican Happenings Stones Rolling 80s Rolling Stones

Author:P. J. O'Rourke

“In the moment of reading, the writer comes up to the surface and the reader comes up to the surface and they kiss, like two fish. That actually does happen.”

Doe Two Moments Happens Reading Reader Kissing Fishes Come Up Surface

Author:George Saunders