Quotessence
Home / Topics / Reader Quotes

Reader Quotes

Browse 3935 quotes about Reader.

Related topics

BookWritingIfsThinkingReadingStoriesPeopleWantWayKnowsWorldCharacterNovelShouldFeelsTryingGivingFirstsMindKindFictionWellsPagesLiteratureMayNeedsWrittenBelieveMeanImportantMightTwoLittlesEndsI CanRealPoetYearsIdeasMadeMenHas BeensHeartLongDoeLooksFactsPersonsCertainDifferentLanguageChildrenArtMatterSeemsUseHumansDoneEnoughFeelingsImaginationInterestWould BeSometimesHardStillsWantedAbleFormHappensLinesMomentsHandsYoungBigsCareHelpingSaidAsksAudiencePleasureSubjectsTurnsSelfCoursesEyeInterestingJobsAgeEnjoyWholeReasonAttentionLibraryKidsOrderMovingThreeTogetherGivenmore

Reader Quotes

“...But I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution....And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and in real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful.”

PeopleThinkingWantWritingHumansPersonsBookRealSelfCharacterCareSoundFictionSituationReaderPaperInstitutionsTiredDon't CareMeaningfulReal LifeSuspenseCodeTensionSelf RespectFascinatingThreateningDollsDilemmaI'm TiredImmoralityVictorianNo RespectBooks And MoviesAmorality
Author:Olive Ann Burns
Create image

“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
Create image

“There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy that connecting with someone through the agency of the written word. Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality. The reader I seek is a tautology, for he/she is simply exactly the person who wants to read what I have written...”

WantPersonsIdeasAgeRaceClassWrittenIdentityReaderPagesGenderNakedIntimacyAgencyConnectingThrillingNationalityWritten WordTautology
Author:Will Self
Create image

“reading is not a passive act. It's a creative act. It's a relationship between the writer and a person the writer will probably never meet. I think it's very wrong to write in a way that leaves no room for the reader to maneuver. I don't want to get in the way. What I'd really like to do is to perform the Indian Rope Trick - go higher and higher and eventually disappear.”

ThinkingWayWantWritingPersonsReadingRoomsCreativeReaderHigherDisappearTricksIndianPassiveRope
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“A lot of times, writers are told write as big as you can, and that's not untrue. But at times I think it's better to write as small as you can, to start scenes with little personal details or people who are doing average every day human things. That, to me, lets the average reader into that person's life. "Yeah I eat breakfast. I take a shower."”

PeopleThinkingWritingHumansLittlesPersonsBigsReaderSceneYeahAverageDetailsBreakfastShowersUntrue
Author:Don Winslow
Create image

“To me, a poem is almost like someone whispering to another person, or you hear the whispering in your head. I hope with my own poems that the reader feels a connection, soul to soul, that'll help us all feel a little less alone on the planet. And it does have the power to direct change. A writer can make the word 'dark' be something positive. You can relieve a word like 'hysterical' of its misogynistic implications. You can make the language your own. That's what poetry is about.”

FeelsLittlesPersonsDoeSoulHelpingLanguageDarkMy OwnPlanetsReaderDirectConnectionsPoetry IsImplicationsWhisperingHysterical
Author:Rita Dove
Create image

“I think [James] Joyce sometimes enjoyed misleading his readers. He said to me that history was like that parlor game where someone whispers something to the person next to him, who repeats it not very distinctly to the next person, and so on until, by the time the last person hears it, it comes out completely transformed. Of course, as he explained to me, the meaning in Finnegans Wake is obscure because it is a 'nightpiece.' I think, too, that, like the author's sight, the work is often blurred.”

ThinkingPersonsSaidSometimesLastsCoursesNextGamesReaderSightEnjoyedRepeatsTransformedObscureMisleadJoyceParlorFinnegans WakeParlor Games
Author:Sylvia Beach
Create image

“I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go​, don't-look-at-my-Amazon-bill. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase. I am the person who family and friends call when they need a book recommendation or cannot remember who wrote Heidi. My identity as a person is so entwined with my love of reading and books that I cannot separate the two.”

NeedsFirstsLooksPersonsI CanTwoBookRememberReadingIdentityReaderBillsCarriePacksFamily And FriendsItemsPursesAmazonRecommendationsSuitcasesLove Of ReadingFlashlightsEntwinedHeidi
Author:Donalyn Miller
Create image

“Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.”

KindMayPersonsActionMovingPoetryAttitudeKnownPoetReaderSpeechCapacityInspiredBreatheRecognitionProphetRevelationsPoeticIntensityListenersProphecyParallelsExceedTransfersUtterancePropheticReceiverNew WordsNew Attitude
Author:Denise Levertov
Create image

“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.”

IfsWayWellsPersonsMightReadingFictionNovelMiddleCenturyReaderApproachVolumeToiletsTwentieth CenturyNourishmentBetter PersonFrivolousDiversionBest PlaceDubiousDichotomyOffendingBroccoli
Book:Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings
Create image

“In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter, but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer.”

FirstsPersonsMatterImaginationViewsPartySubjectsPerspectiveReaderThirdsPoint Of ViewEncountersDistinctionInvitesRepresentationObserversPornographyEroticSubject MatterFirst PersonThird Person
Book:Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation
Create image

“You can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that person if there's obviously ignorance here. What's wrong with so much science fiction is that the science is so lousy that it isn't worth paying attention to.”

IfsPersonsBookWholeEyeLosesAttentionFictionIgnoranceReaderScience FictionPay AttentionEngineersSpoilBlinkChemistAnthropologistsBlink Of An Eye
Author:Robert Caro
Create image

“What a person loves at 20 may seem stupid at 35. That doesn't mean the book was stupid, it means that the time when it spoke to the reader is past. So . . . I'm cautious about rereading favorite books. I hate to spoil the good feelings they created. Keeping the good feelings is more important than rereading the book. Moving on is a good thing.”

MayMeanPersonsImportantBookFeelingsSeemsPastMovingHateStupidReaderI HateGood ThingsSpokesSpoilCautiousGood FeelingFavorite BookRereadingPersons Love
Author:Carl Deuker
Create image

“I wanted to do something different. Therefore, the first person I thought would have been too exclusionary. It would have said me, me, me, me, me. I, I, I, I, I. As if I were pushing away my experiences from the experiences of others. Because basically what I was trying to do was show our commonality. I mean to say, in the very ordinariness of what I recount I think perhaps the reader will find resonances with his or her own life.”

IfsThinkingTryingFirstsMeanPersonsHas BeensSaidDifferentShowsWantedReaderPushingFirst PersonResonanceCommonalityOrdinarinessPushing Away
Author:Paul Auster
Create image

“All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places. I have been aware of other persons in me. Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader that is to be. Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as an experience of childhood. You were then not fixed, not crystallized. You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness and an identity in the process of forming--ay, of forming and forgetting.”

PersonsHas BeensSoulSpeakProcessForgetConsciousnessChildhoodAwarenessIdentityReaderRememberedFixedYour ChildrenPlasticTrust MeFluxAwareness Of Others
Book:Jack London on Adventure: Words of Wisdom from an Expert Adventurer
Create image

“Just coming to terms with the fact that I got to play April Wheeler [Revolutionary Road] and Hanna Schmitz [The Reader] in one year, let alone in my lifetime. I'm very, very aware of how rare that is as an opportunity for any one person. I can't tell you how much I've been able to take away from these experiences creatively. I really, really learned so much about acting, about myself... all of those things. It's difficult to talk about the actor's process without sounding like an arrogant asshole but they really were very challenging.”

YearsPersonsI CanPlayFactsAbleActorsOpportunityProcessDifficultTermChallengesActingReaderLifetimeRevolutionaryArrogantApril
Author:Kate Winslet
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWantPersonsI CanTodaySocialGoalLosesMysteryMediaReaderMessagesSocial MediaCompareReach OutMailElitistUntouchablesTwitter And Facebook
Author:Matt de la Pena
Create image

“I'm speaking to someone I'm trying to get to fall in love with me. I'm trying to speak intimately to one person. That should be clear. I'm not speaking to an audience. I'm not writing for the podium. I'm just writing, trying to write in a fairly quiet tone to one other reader who is by herself, or himself, and I'm trying to interrupt some silence in their life, which is utterance.”

ShouldWritingTryingPersonsFallSpeakSilenceAudienceClearReaderQuietFalling In LoveToneUtterance
Author:Billy Collins
Create image

“Not to any really influential effect, but certainly there have been comments that have surprised me. It's surprising sometimes to get particular perspectives on your work, and it's enlightening sometimes to know that non-writers and readers out there have certain assumptions about everything that I both want to keep in mind and want to forget about why I write, and about the connection between me as a private person and the stuff that I think about on the page.”

ThinkingKnowsWantWritingMindPersonsHas BeensSometimesCertainStuffForgetEffectsParticularPerspectiveReaderPagesConnectionsAssumptionCommentSurprisingEnlighteningInfluential
Author:Chang-Rae Lee
Create image

“Since I started as a comic person then became a musician to me it was interesting because I have this really great, interesting fanbase that's really smart and energetic and uh how could I steer them towards a medium that shaped who I was? You know, steer them toward comics. That was really the goal, to bring a lot of readers cuz they were reading a lot of comics but most of them hadn't been reading American comics, they'd be reading manga sitting on the floor of a Barnes and Noble.”

KnowsPersonsReadingGoalInterestingReaderMusicianSmartSittingNobleMediumsComicReally GreatEnergeticSteersCuzReally Smart
Author:Gerard Way
Create image