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Reader Quotes

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Reader Quotes

“Most people are middle class. Most people do wish their lives were better than they are. And I think by making my main characters ordinary, average guys, it helps readers identify with their problems. It also helps ground the supernatural events that follow in a recognizable reality and perhaps gives some of my wilder scenarios a little verisimilitude.”

People Thinking Giving Littles Character Helping Problem Reality Guy Wish Class Middle Events Reader Ordinary Average Middle Class Scenarios Main Characters Wilder

Author:Bentley Little

“More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book alone, if they could help it, than have a baby alone.”

People Ifs Thinking Men Book Helping Middle Baby Reader Critics Indispensable

Author:Randall Jarrell

“The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his sense, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events.”

Ifs Feels Made Certain Middle Events Reader Tales Improbable Believable

Author:Ray Bradbury

“F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for theeighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.”

Source: Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings

“In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.”

“Most readers look at the photograph first. If you put it in the middle of the page, the reader will start by looking in the middle. Then her eye must go up to read the headline; this doesn't work, because people have a habit of scanning downwards. However, suppose a few readers do read the headline after seeing the photograph below it. After that, you require them to jump down past the photograph which they have already seen. Not bloody likely.”

People Ifs Firsts Looks Eye Past Seeing Middle Reader Habit Pages Photograph Bloody Her Eyes Headlines Scanning

Author:David Ogilvy

“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.”

“There are three big things going for The Scorpio Races: first, it is set on a beautiful but wild island in the middle of the cold Atlantic Ocean. That would've seduced me as a teen reader. Second, It is full of beautiful but killer horses being trained for a dangerous race. Actually, that would've seduced me as a teen reader as well. At third it involves a very repressed love story with a very Mr. Darcy-like love interest.”

“Americans are curious about the texture of everyday life in the Middle East because they rarely get to see it. I wanted readers to feel like they were sitting around the dinner table with me and my friends, hearing what average people really say and really think, [where] the dinner table is the best place to find out.”

People Thinking Feels Wanted Middle Reader Sitting My Friends Tables Everyday Average Hearing Dinner East Curious Middle East Everyday Life Texture Sitting Around Best Place Dinner Table

Author:Annia Ciezadlo

“Some readers and commentators really want to scrape your insides out to make sense of your work. Others say, there's the work, it speaks for itself. Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle.”

Want Fall Speak Middle Reader Make Sense Working It Commentators

Author:J. K. Rowling

“Literature may open a third eye in the middle of the reader's forehead.”

May Eye Literature Middle Reader Thirds Foreheads Third Eye

Author:Amos Oz

“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

“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.”

“What I'm really addicted to is getting people to understand that if their kids aren't competent readers coming out of middle school, it's really going to be hard for them in high school.”

People Ifs Hard Kids School Middle Reader High School Coming Out Competent Middle School

Author:James Patterson

“I think anytime you're writing to the middle grades, you're writing to young readers who are trapped in a number of ways between two worlds: between childhood and adulthood, between their friends and their parents.”

Thinking World Way Writing Two Young Parent Numbers Childhood Middle Reader Grades Trapped Adulthood Two Worlds

Author:Rick Riordan

“There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, 'You must read this.' I've always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.”

Writing Book Feelings Wanted America Rooms Middle Reader Clubs Spread Meaningful Lovely Discourse Living Room Contributing Book Club Middle America

Author:Abraham Verghese