Best reader & ifs Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 5

“All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative - good old-fashioned storytelling - is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug.”

Ifs Should Writing Together Remember Fall Next Clear Reader Logic Sentences Storytelling Narrative Tension Sections Old Fashioned Falling Apart Noticing Paragraph Linear Glue One Sentence

Author:William Zinsser

“The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn't induce him to continue to the third sentence, it's equally dead.”

Ifs Firsts Important Reader Thirds Sentences Articles

Author:William Zinsser

“There's no subject you don't have permission to write about. Students often avoid subjects close to their heart ... because they assume that their teachers will regard those topics as 'stupid.' No area of life is stupid to someone who takes it seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.”

Ifs Writing Wells Heart Life Is Teacher Subjects Stupid Students Reader Areas Regard Assuming Affection Permission Topics

Author:William Zinsser

“Why all this insistence on the senses? Because in order to convince your reader that he is THERE, you must assault each of his senses, in turn, with color, sound, taste, and texture. If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won. The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events. He cannot refuse, then, to participate. The logic of events always gives way to the logic of the senses.”

“If history records good things about good people, the thoughtful hearer is encouraged to imitate what is good; or if it records the evil of wicked people, the godly listener or reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and bad, and to do what he knows to be good and pleasing to God.”

People Ifs Knows Evil Records Reader Good Things Be Good Thoughtful Wicked Good People Listeners Godly

Author:Venerable Bede

“Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people will make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this: and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself, an encourage it in others.”

People Ifs Art Character Use Remember Nations Practice Virtue Wise Depends Reader Blessing Prove Contrary Miserable Curse Righteousness Spheres Thyself Gracious

Author:Patrick Henry

“If the reader doesn't understand what you're saying, you're talking to yourself.”

Ifs Talking Reader Talking To Yourself

Author:Nigel Hamilton

“I've been accused over the years of being close to players, but if something needs to be written, I've tried my best to write it and write it in a way that is fair to whoever I'm writing about and is fair to all of my readers.”

Ifs Way Needs Writing Years Player Written Reader Fairs Accused

Author:Peter King

“We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose-that horse-shoe mouth-that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart-of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress-of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant-of that forked chin-and, above all, of the expression diffused over the whole-that mixture of malice, astonishment, and melancholy. Let the reader, if he can, figure to himself this combination.”

Source: The Novels of Victor Hugo: Profusely Illustrated with Elegant Wood Engravings

“Surely few if any readers have come across the sentence they are now reading, and someone who had by chance heard or seen it could not possibly remember such a fact.”

Ifs Facts Remember Reading Chance Heard Reader Sentences

Book:Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures

Source: Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures

“If readers understand that they do not understand what they are reading then they must possess an understanding which is superior to the meaning which caused that misunderstanding.”

Ifs Reading Understanding Reader Superiors Misunderstanding

Author:Arlo Guthrie

“I want the kind of readers who remain children at any cost. I can tell them at a glance: loyalty to that first enchantment guards better than any cosmetic; than any diet, against the insults of age. But alas for such readers, who would huddle safe and sound in the asylum of their credulous enchantment as if in the womb-our enervating century offends them by its chaos, its fidgets of light and space, the host of its excuses for dividing , for rending oneself from others and from oneself.”

“My objective always is to stay as close as possible and shoot the pictures as if through the eyes of the infantryman, the Marine, or the pilot. I wanted to give the reader something of the visual perspective and feeling of the guy under fire, his apprehensions and sufferings, his tensions and releases, his behavior in the presence of threatening death.”

Ifs Giving Feelings Eye Wanted Guy Suffering Fire Perspective Reader Behavior Objectives Release Tension Visuals Pilots Threatening Marine Apprehension Through The Eyes Infantryman

Author:David Douglas Duncan

“I myself discovered many authors through school reading lists and through school anthologies. The positives are: young readers can find the world opening up to them through books they study. The negatives may include bad experiences kids have - if they don't like the book or the teacher, or the way the book is taught.”

Ifs World Way May Book Kids School Young Reading Study Teacher Taught Reader Lists Opening Opening Up Anthology Bad Experiences

Author:Margaret Atwood

“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.”

Ifs Firsts I Can Reason Running School Reading Individual Saws Groups Reader Taste Assuming Running Away

Author:Margaret Atwood

“I feel that if I establish the world or the premise from the first line, then I can get the reader to come with me where I want her to go.”

Ifs World Want Feels Firsts I Can Lines Reader Premises

Author:Laurie Foos

“As a reader, I have a very short attention span and a low tolerance for boredom, and I find that comes in handy with my writing. If I get bored writing something, I pity the people who will then try to read it.”

People Ifs Writing Trying Attention Reader Lows Tolerance Pity Bored Boredom Handy Attention Span Short Attention Spans

Author:John Scalzi

“You can write a 1st paragraph that continues the same thought you expressed in your headline. If you stop a reader with a headline about house paint, you can be sure of at least one thing about that reader: He wants more info about house paint. You will not lose him as long as you continue to give him what he wants.”

Ifs Want Giving Writing Long House Loses One Thing Reader Paint Headlines Paragraph

Author:John Caples

“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

“Most people write the same sentence over and over again. The same number of words-say, 8-10, or 10-12. The same sentence structure. Try to become stretchy-if you generally write 8 words, throw a 20 word sentence in there, and a few three-word shorties. If you're generally a 20 word writer, make sure you throw in some threes, fivers and sevens, just to keep the reader from going crosseyed.”

People Ifs Writing Trying Three Numbers Reader Structure Sentences Three Words Sentence Structure

Author:Janet Fitch

“Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer's head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different.”

Ifs Way May Book Different Play Lying Sound Black Voice Pieces Heard Air Reader Musician Pages Letters Mark Musical Score Interpretation Frozen Alphabet Violinist

Author:Margaret Atwood

“Ordering is very important with essays, even if a reader doesn't read the essays or the poems in order through the book...”

Ifs Important Book Order Reader Essays

Author:Pattiann Rogers

“WWII is something contemporary readers already know a lot about. If our schools are doing their jobs, they know about the invasion of Normandy, the Hitler Youth, the Holocaust, and at least a few of the horrors of the Eastern Front.”

Ifs Knows School Jobs Fronts Youth Reader Horror Contemporary Holocaust Eastern Invasion Wwii Normandy Hitler Youth

Author:Anthony Doerr

“I never want to play down to the reader. I think readers are willing to go along if they're intrigued.”

Ifs Thinking Want Play Willing Reader Intrigued

Author:Joseph Boyden

“I only know what it's like to be an author with social media. I can't compare. I do think we lose the mystery of the author. Today, I get tons of e-mails and Facebook messages from readers, and my goal with Twitter and Facebook is, if someone reaches out to me, I'm going to respond to them. I don't want to be an elitist author who is untouchable. I'm just a regular person, too. I will always respond to everybody.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Want Persons I Can Today Social Goal Loses Mystery Media Reader Messages Social Media Compare Reach Out Mail Elitist Untouchables Twitter And Facebook

Author:Matt de la Pena

“By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.”

Ifs Way Kind Mean Simple Clear Reader Understood Areas Clarity Grounded Comforting Disorientation

Author:Billy Collins

“As soon as I start to write I'm very aware, I'm trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick up this poem, a stranger. So when I'm writing - and I think that this is important for all writers - I'm trying to be a writer and a reader back and forth. I write two lines or three lines. I will immediately stop and turn into a reader instead of a writer, and I'll read those lines as if I had never seen them before and as if I had never written them.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Trying Wells Two Important Might Turns Three Lines Written Reader Picks Stranger Back And Forth

Author:Billy Collins

“Whereas if you were writing an op-ed piece or an essay, somebody would be asking, "What's your point?" With poetry you can stay in a moment for as long as you want. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. It's the thing that opens out to something else. What that something else is changes for readers. So what's on the page - it falls away.”

Ifs Want Writing Long Moments Would Be Fall Pieces Reader Pages Standing Asking Metaphor Poetry Is Essays

Author:Claudia Rankine

“I wasn't trying to write a corrective novel - that would just end up tasting like medicine, and I tried to stay away from polemics as best I could. I think that, if anything, Fobbit is my way of showing readers there's another side to war - the backstage of combat, if you will. If you play a word association game with Americans and say "war," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Soldiers running across a battlefield through a hail of bullets, right? Rambo, smoke, explosions. In Fobbit, I hope readers will see something a little different”

“If Fobbit leaves a reader feeling stranded in some bland in-between territory, then I haven't done my job. But having said all that, I didn't consciously write the book with a particular moral intent. I took what I experienced and processed it through the sausage factory of fiction. It's up to readers to interpret what's on the page - as is the case with any novel.”

Ifs Writing Said Book Done Feelings Jobs Fiction Moral Cases Novel Havens Particular Reader Pages Territory Factories Sausage Bland Stranded

Author:Dave Abrams

“If a reader believes that everything in nonfiction or history is just objectively true, I don't really know what to tell them, except that at least in fiction, the choice of what perspective and bias to tell a given story from - which is always a deliberate choice - is foregrounded and clear.”

Ifs Knows Believe Stories Choices Given Fiction Clear Perspective Reader Nonfiction Bias Deliberate

Author:Kathleen Rooney

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Firsts Reader Lessons Nervous Guarantees Nervous System

Author:Fred D'Aguiar

“If you had told me twenty years ago that I would write a novel set in Russia, much less two, I simply wouldn't have believed you. I had no familiarity with Russia or its history, but part of what drives me as a reader, and more and more as a writer, is curiosity, the desire to explore unfamiliar terrain and inhabit alternate lives.”

Ifs Writing Years Two Desire Novel Reader Years Ago Twenties Curiosity Russia Familiarity Unfamiliar Terrain

Author:Debra Dean

“So if there was a way that I knew something about my character's desires or the things that they were resisting because I was saving it for some grand epiphany moment for my readers, I just feel like that's when you can feel the machine at work in a story. That's when you can feel the writer pulling the strings of the puppet.”

Ifs Way Feels Moments Character Stories Desire Reader Machines Saving Strings Pulling Puppets Resisting Epiphany

Author:Molly Antopol

“I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!”

Ifs Thinking Way Want Writing Years Done Law Novel Reader Conscious Impact Hey

Author:John Brandon

“Very often, or perhaps more often, and even in very good collections - even in some of the best collections ever written, I would argue - it's because our "voicier" writers hew so closely to one given set of dictional tics that we as readers can't read the books all the way through in a single sitting, because if we did, the stories and their narrators would all start to bleed together.”

Ifs Way Book Stories Together Given Written Reader Sitting Very Good Arguing Collections Narrators Tics

Author:Roy Kesey

“Let's have some boilerplate language that accurately describes the candidate that we're talking about. If readers are unfamiliar, here are the descriptions of his behavior and here are the links to that behavior that is described.”

Ifs Language Talking Reader Behavior Candidates Description Links Unfamiliar

Author:Ryan Grim

“Most writers are lazy intellectuals, and it's a goddamn shame because a writer with an audience has a moral responsibility to make readers think about the world in a different way than what they're used to. Why else would you pick up a book if not to inhabit another realm of existence for a while?”

Ifs Thinking World Way Book Different Used Existence Responsibility Moral Audience Reader Picks Shame Different Ways Realms Lazy Moral Responsibility

Author:Kevin Keck

“Not every story lends itself tonally to humor, so you have to navigate that territory properly. You can put a humorous spin on anything, really, if you know what you're doing, but it's not always desirable to have your reader laughing on every page.”

Ifs Knows Stories Laughing Reader Pages Humorous Territory Desirable Navigate

Author:Kevin Keck

“I take pleasure as a reader in books that tease with a kind of urgency of the real, even if it's only a manufactured effect.”

Ifs Kind Book Real Pleasure Effects Reader Urgency Tease

Author:Garth Greenwell

“I'm quite a good reader of people; I like to meet people, and I can tell if they're lying or not, and I've certainly had interviews with people in this radio show I've done that swear they've seen things or have had bizarre experiences with creatures, and so I think they're telling the truth.”

People Ifs Thinking I Can Done Shows Lying Reader Creatures Radio Interviews Telling The Truth Swear Bizarre

Author:Rhys Darby

“I'm quite a good reader of people; I like to meet people, and I can tell if they're lying or not.”

People Ifs I Can Lying Reader

Author:Rhys Darby

“I hope readers will consider, especially in this age of the World Wide Web, that as miraculous as it is, we still need to be in the same room with all five senses if we are to empathize with each other.”

Ifs World Needs Stills Age Rooms Five Reader Wide Senses Miraculous Five Senses World Wide Web

Author:Gloria Steinem

“If I can be more efficient, I'm actually being more respectful to the reader, which then implies a greater intimacy with the reader.”

Ifs I Can Greater Reader Intimacy Efficient Respectful

Author:George Saunders

“When I'm teaching, I'm not really doing my job if the student who's always comfortable doing wacko stuff all over the page keeps getting gold stars from me for doing wacko stuff all over the page. A riskier assignment for that student, who might be used to hiding behind a lot of formal armor, would be to try to do something straightforward, traditionally, in which they are much more directly laid bare for the reader.”

Ifs Trying Might Would Be Jobs Used Stars Stuff Behinds Teaching Students Reader Comfortable Pages Gold Hiding Formal Straightforward Armor Assignments

Author:John D'Agata

“If some readers take away the idea that animals deserve better treatment in general, then I certainly won't argue.”

Ifs Ideas Animal Reader Deserve Arguing Treatment Deserve Better

Author:Robert Paul Weston

“Joyce's writing in Dubliners contains some of the most unshowily beautiful sentences in the English language. I learned from him that if you write a good, clean line of English, you can get under a reader's skin. The reader won't even know why, but there you are. Didion, Berger, the many others I mentioned above, and many, many poets I haven't mentioned. Writers of this calibre are the moving targets the rest of us are always chasing.”

Ifs Knows Writing Beautiful Moving Language Lines Havens Poet Reader Skins Clean Sentences Target Chasing English Language Joyce

Author:Teju Cole

“I suspect that any worthwhile exploration of these deep questions about living requires going beyond abstract discussions to the vivid presentation of possibilities. If readers are to be prompted to serious examination of their lives, anatomy isn't enough. We have to be stimulated to imagine, in some detail, what it would be like to live in particular ways.”

Ifs Way Enough Would Be Imagine Possibility Particular Serious Reader Details Discussion Abstract Suspects Exploration Worthwhile Vivid Examination Presentation Anatomy

Author:Philip Kitcher

“I had to decide if I wanted to be known as a writer or a reader. I chose writer.”

Ifs Wanted Known Reader

Author:Nathan Lowell

“I could always write in a wide variety. My moods change same as reader's moods change. I really do love writing the historicals, however, but if that's all I did I would go crazy, same with any of the other kinds of books. I need variety.”

Ifs Needs Writing Kind Book Crazy Reader Wide Mood Variety Mood Changes

Author:Joe R. Lansdale

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