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Reader Quotes

“Believe me, I love commerce as much as the rest of the readers of 'Businessweek.' But in art, you have to be true to yourself and your musical vision. People have known me well for a long time, so if I was chasing a trend and doing something that wasn't authentic to who I am, they would know it in just a few seconds.”

PeopleIfsKnowsBelieveWellsLongArtKnownVisionReaderLong TimeMusicalWho I AmBeing TrueTrendsSecondsBelieve In MeCommerceChasingBe True To YourselfTrue To YourselfE Commerce
Author:Lionel Richie
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“The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.”

IfsFirstsLongWould BePastNightActingTeachNovelTeacherReaderSatisfiedNovelistsImperfectionBehalfSavageryLong Nights
Book:Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text, Contexts and Criticism
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“Ironically, Henry James' biography comforts me & I long to make known to him his posthumous reputation he wrote, in pain, gave all his life (which is more than I could think of doing I have Ted, will have children but few friends) & the critics insulted & mocked him, readers didn't read him.”

ThinkingChildrenLongPainKnownReaderComfortCriticsReputationBiographiesInsultedFew FriendsPosthumous
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“I think Miss Moore was right to cut "The Steeple-Jack" - the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state but she has cut too much... The reader may feel like saying, "Let her do as she pleases with the poem; it's hers, isn't it?" No; it's much too good a poem for that, it long ago became everybody's, and we can protest just as we could if Donatello cut off David's left leg.”

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Author:Randall Jarrell
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“My books are based on the "what if" principle. "What if you became invisible?" or "What if you did change into your mother for one day?" I then take it from there. Each book takes several months in the long process of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, and each has its own set of problems. The one thing I dislike about the writing process is the sometimes-loneliness of it all. Readers only get to see the glamour part of a bound book, not some of the agonizing moments one has while constructing it.”

IfsWritingLongBookSometimesMomentsProblemMotherProcessPrinciplesOne ThingLonelinessMonthsReaderOne DayBoundsInvisibleWhat IfDislikeWriting ProcessGlamourRewritingAgonizing
Author:Mary Rodgers
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“Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side than of that.”

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Author:John Galsworthy
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“When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra Pound is seriously offered as a poem, there is some justification for the plain reader and orthodox critic who shrinks from anything that may be labelled 'modernist' either in terms of condemnation or approbation. Better he thinks, that ten authentic poets should be left for posterity to discover than one charlatan should be allowed to steal into the Temple of Fame.”

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Author:Laura Riding
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“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 word—tension—has 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 end—is the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?”

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Author:John Jeremiah Sullivan
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“I have hardly detained the reader long enough on the subject, to give him a just impression of the stress laid on confession. It is one of the great points to which our attention was constantly directed.”

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Book:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: As Exhibited in a Narrative of Her Sufferings During a Residence of Five Years as a Novice, and Two Years as a Black Nun, in the Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal
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“I was a voracious reader and I could never understand why comics were of any less merit or importance than any other way of writing. I think the thing that keeps me with comics is there's still so much to be done. There's still this huge unplowed field, this huge unexplored wilderness, and as long as I can keep doing new things and coming up with new things, I will.”

ThinkingWayWritingLongStillsI CanDoneFieldsHugeReaderImportanceMeritWildernessNew ThingsUnexplored
Author:Neil Gaiman
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“Eve Byron has a permanent place on my must-buy list. Her characters are three-dimensional men and women who live on in readers' hearts long after they've turned the last page. ONLY IN MY DREAMS is pure Eve Byron, which means it's a pure delight. I fell in love with Lorelei and Dane, two of the most delightful characters I've encountered in a very long time. Byron's magical touch never falters. ONLY IN MY DREAMS is a surefire hit!”

MenHeartMeanLongTwoCharacterDreamLastsThreeReaderPurePagesLong TimeMen And WomenDelightListsPermanentDelightfulByron
Author:Barbara Bretton
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“I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines. Spaces within a line, double colons, slashes, are indications of pause, of breath, of urgency, they are not metrically exact as in a musical notation but they serve (I hope) to make the reader think about the sound of the poem - just as traffic symbols, when driving, make us almost unconsciously aware of a steep hill, an intersection, an icy bridge etc.”

ThinkingWayLongSoundLinesSpaceReaderBreathsMusicalDrivingSymbolsHillsBridgesEtcTrafficPausesUrgencyIndicationSteepIcyIntersectionsLong Lines
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“I might refer at once, if necessary, to a hundred well authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement.”

IfsWellsMayLongCharacterMightMemoriesCitiesReaderCircumstancesHundredPainfulIntenseInstanceExcitementRemarkableLong AgoBaltimore
Book:Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
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“There are some simple maxims which I think might be commended to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. So, if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.”

IfsThinkingWantFirstsLongEndsUseMightSimpleReaderExpectationsThirdsSentencesStatementsGreat MenProseMaximsQualificationsShort WordsLong Words
Book:The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
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“News is like the tilefish which appears in great schools off the Atlantic Coast some years and then vanishes, no one knows whither or for how long. Newspapers might employ these periods searching for the breeding grounds of news, but they prefer to fill up with stories about Kurdled Kurds or Calvin Coolidge, until the banks close or a Hitler marches, when they are as surprised as their readers.”

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Author:A. J. Liebling
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“To all my gentle readers who have treated me with love for over 30 years, I must say farewell. It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys, but that's not the way it worked out. I have had a long and happy life and I have no complaints about the ending, thereof, and so farewell - farewell.”

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Author:Isaac Asimov
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“A form wherein we can enjoy simultaneously what is best in both the novel and the short story form. My plan was to create a book that affords readers some of the novel's long-form pleasures but that also contains the short story's ability to capture what is so difficult about being human - the brevity of our moments, their cruel irrevocability.”

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Author:Junot Diaz
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“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.”

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Author:Claudia Rankine
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“Especially with a magazine like Lampoon, which was very dependent on newsstand sales. Our readers didn't usually occupy the same address long enough to get a subscription, because they were in college, or they were hippies. So it was very up-and-down, and we had to calculate how many to print, which was always sort of a headache from a business point of view.”

LongEnoughViewsCollegeReaderDown AndPoint Of ViewMagazinesAddressesDependentPrintUp And DownHippieHeadacheSubscription
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“With a novel, you have the reader with you a lot longer, and you owe him a lot more. Obviously you have to have a plot - I say "obviously," although I think a lot of fiction doesn't, and nothing seems to happen. But to me, there should be something that happens, and it should be at least vaguely plausible. And because the readers are going to be with these characters for a long time, you have to get to know them and like them and want to know what happens to them.”

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Author:Dave Barry
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“I think that Indian writing in English is a really peculiar beast. I can't think of any literature - perhaps Russian literature in the nineteenth century comes close - so exclusively produced by and closely identified with a tiny but powerful ruling elite, the upper-caste, Anglophone upper middle class, and dependent for so long on book buyers and readers elsewhere.”

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Author:Pankaj Mishra
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