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Reader Quotes

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Reader Quotes

“Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.”

IfsThinkingWritingStillsSelfBigsRememberMemoriesWindReaderFindingsOur FamilyThemeVividIncidentsOur MemoriesSagaSelf Contained
Book:Writing about Your Life: A Journey Into the Past
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“I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer. I am none of these; I'm a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.”

MenHumansFactsCertainForceTermMemoriesVirtueMinesTypeReaderNormalMessagesClothesLuckCuriosityProphetDistressDistrustGood MemoriesDetestMetaphoricalSeersMaelstrom
Author:Primo Levi
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“It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing -- to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos -- of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings -- in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, "This is I!”

WritingTryingPersonsEndsWholeMomentsFeelingsActionMemoriesReaderDespairChaosWideRageUnhappyReactionsVainAssociationGesturesJungleAlways TryingAction And Reaction
Book:Blue Voyage: A Novel
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“The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment and a particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated combination determine his response to the text.”

NeedsMomentsPastMemoriesConditionsEventsParticularPersonalityReaderElementsResponseDetermineMoodCombinationTraitsPreoccupationPersonality TraitsPast Events
Book:Transactions with literature: a fifty-year perspective : for Louise M. Rosenblatt
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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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“One thing I like about writing is that it provides such a wonderful opportunity for confidential chats with readers. In the privacy of writing, and reading, we can discuss topics that are a little touchy, a bit embarrassing, and feel less alone in the process. Feeling consumed by memories from high school. Feeling wimpy. Feeling time-obsessed. Yearning for our fathers. Wishing we were taller, or shorter, or less average. To name just a few.”

FeelsWritingLittlesFeelingsSchoolReadingFatherOpportunityNamesWishBitsProcessMemoriesWonderfulOne ThingReaderHigh SchoolAverageObsessedPrivacyYearningTopicsEmbarrassingConsumedOur FatherWriting And ReadingConfidentialTouchy
Author:Ralph Keyes
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“This may be a little bit of a provocative thing to say, but the memoirist doesn't owe the reader anything other than a good story and the inclining of the mind in the direction of memory. Of course, the memoirist is not allowed to make things up. But the really skilled memoirist knows what to leave in and what to leave out to serve the story. In autobiography you can't do that.”

KnowsMindMayLittlesStoriesCoursesBitsMemoriesReaderLittle BitAutobiographyGood StoryProvocative
Author:Dani Shapiro
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“A trouble with poetry is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions. I try to presume that no one is interested in me. And I think experience bears that out. No one's interested in the experiences of a stranger - let's put it that way. And then you have difficulty combined with presumptuousness, which is the most dire trouble with poetry.”

ThinkingWayTryingProblemInterestMemoriesTroublePoetBearsReaderPerceptionDifficultyStrangerGrantedPoetry IsMinors
Author:Billy Collins
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