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Reader Quotes

Browse 3935 quotes about Reader.

Reader Quotes

“I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.”

World Giving Writing Believe Enough Lost Sound Voice Willing Reader Ideals Keep Going New World

Author:Elizabeth Strout

“The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.”

Reading Reader Ideals Suicide Sentimental

Book:A Reader on Reading

Source: A Reader on Reading

“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

“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

“We waste a lot of time and a lot of talent trying to write for the common reader, whom we will never meet. Instead we should be writing for our ideal reader.”

Should Writing Trying Common Talent Reader Waste Ideals

Author:Julia Cameron

“To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to force him to lay it down with a higher ideal of life than he had when he took it up.”

Thinking Way Force Can Do Fiction Pieces Reader Higher Ideals Lays My Way Way Of Thinking

Author:Gene Stratton-Porter

“I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry.”

Ifs Writing Wonder Wife New York Poet Reader Smart Ideals My Wife Very Smart

Author:Kenneth Koch

“Auden, who asked two things of an imagined world-that it be somehow like ours and somehow unlike-would be Ben Marcus's ideal reader, yet even without the poet's dire program, I am altogether taken by this hilarious and sexy alternative universe. Just imagine! it is all done with words instead of mirrors, so much more reliable and so much more heartbreaking. Thus Prospero enthralls his crew.”

World Two Done Would Be Universe Taken Imagine Poet Reader Ideals Program Mirrors Sexy Alternatives Two Things Crew Heartbreaking Auden Prospero

Author:Richard Howard

“The paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence.”

Knows Book States Chance Reader Happenings Ideals Killing Innocence Paradox Publicity

Author:Emma Donoghue

“That ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia.”

Suffering Reader Ideals Insomnia

Author:James Joyce

“My ideal reader is somebody who reads my poems out loud.”

Reader Ideals Loud

Author:James Arthur

“The ideal reader's the same, and I suppose this person has never had a face or a gender or an age. It's just some kind of unknown other who will be sympathetic and read each word carefully and understand what I'm writing about. I suppose every writer feels this.”

Feels Writing Kind Persons Age Faces Reader Ideals Gender Sympathetic

Author:Paul Auster

“I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities that author has to offer; and that for a host of reasons the bound book is the ideal vehicle for the written word.”

Source: The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age

“Fiction is always a utopian task, in that there's an ideal you hold in your head as you write which inevitably fails in the moment of creation, in the insufficiency of words to convey meaning, or in the way the work is completed in the reader's head.”

Way Writing Moments Fiction Failing Creation Reader Ideals Tasks Utopian Insufficiency

Author:Lauren Groff

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

People Writing Enough Figures Reader Ideals Labor Intelligent Lazy

Author:Rigoberto Gonzalez

“Names don't matter, CVs don't matter, previous publications don't matter at all, because, in a certain way, the ideal is for someone to come completely out of left field. And still, of course, it is hard to say no to a writer who matters a lot to you and who you know matters to your readers.”

Knows Way Stills Matter Hard Certain Courses Names Left Fields Reader Ideals Publication Who You Know Left Field

Author:Lorin Stein

“I'm my own "ideal reader" in the sense that I write novels that I would want to read.”

Want Writing My Own Novel Reader Ideals

Author:Steve Erickson

“I feel like the older I get, the truer it feels that I'm only going have an investment in a poem if it allows or forces me to bring something that's supremely me onto the page. I used to think that the speaker of a poem was talking to someone else, to some ideal reader or listener, but now I think that speakers - poets - are talking to themselves. The poem allows you to pose questions that you have you ask of yourself knowing that they are unanswerable.”

Ifs Thinking Feels Used Asks Force Talking Knowing Poet Reader Pages Ideals Investment Speakers Listeners Talking To Someone

Author:Tracy K. Smith