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Reader Quotes

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Reader Quotes

“It is the specialist's task to talk about means, about centimeters. An artist's task is to talk about the goal, about kilometers, thousands of kilometers. The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony -- the cathode and anode in literature. But irony that is measured in centimeters is pathetic, and centimeter-sized pathos is ridiculous. No one can be carried away by it. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving.”

InspirationalMeanArtEndsMovingArtistLiteratureSpeakGoalRolesMankindReaderTasksRidiculousIronyPatheticSpecialistsCarried AwayPathos
Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin
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“It is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," etc.; and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact , out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one.”

IfsKnowsFactsFeelingsEyeSpeakTalkingSeaReaderHabitPureHighestWaveRageChecksFixedHis EyesEtcFloodTrue OnesRemorseless
Book:The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings
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“The question so often asked of modern painting, "What is it?", contains more than the dull skepticism of the man who is not going to have the wool pulled over his eyes. It speaks of a fundamental placement in relation to the work, that of a voyager in the world coming upon a strange object. The reader reconstitutes the work by his active participation, by approaching the object, tapping it, shaking it, holding it to his ear to hear the roaring within. It is characteristic of the object that it does not declare itself all at once, in a rush of pleasant naïveté.”

MenWorldDoeEyeSpeakModernObjectsStrangeHe ManPaintingReaderEarsRelationFundamentalsActiveCharacteristicsPleasantHis EyesDullSkepticismParticipationShakingRoaringTappingWoolVetsPlacementActive ParticipationShaking It
Author:Donald Barthelme
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“We were pregnant at the time, and while I was out there I started to realize that if I had a daughter, there would come a day when I would have to apologize to her for my profession. I would have to apologize for the way it treats and speaks to women readers, and the way it treats its female characters.”

IfsWayBookCharacterSpeakRealizingReaderDaughterFemaleTreatsProfessionComicPregnantApologizingComic BookFemale CharactersWere Pregnant
Author:Matt Fraction
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“Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood; and it can seldom happen but he that understands himself, might convey his notions to another, if, content to be understood, he did not seek to be admired; but when once he begins to contrive how his sentiments may be received, not with most ease to his reader, but with most advantage to himself, he then transfers his consideration from words to sounds, from sentences to periods, and, as he grows more elegant, becomes less intelligible.”

IfsMenWritingMayMightHappensSpeakGrowsSoundReaderPeriodsUnderstoodAdvantageNotionSentencesEvery ManEaseConsiderationSentimentsElegantTransfers
Book:The Idler: With Additional Essays
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“For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels-at the very least with the tongues of angels-they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes.”

IfsGivingWould BeEyeBeautifulSongSpeakLanguageFeltVoiceAnimalCenturyPoetReaderSorrowEmpathyAngelSkinsTongueSavedMysteriousShellsCoatsOtherness
Book:Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals
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“It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.”

HumansLooksBookStoriesSpeakGrowsPoorWiseReaderPagesLibraryCornersDinnerBentEloquenceWhiskeyGood StoryLivelyCirculationSprungLibrary BooksMustardDabs
Book:Salem's Lot
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“Real writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response.... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself.”

KnowsWantWritingWellsRealBigsMightSpeakOpinionWrittenReaderLettersAssumingResponseRewardsFatsPrintFeedbackOccasionalCommentatorsFlatteringEditorialsImplying
Author:Malcolm Forbes
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“Such humble talents as God had given me I will endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am able to amuse, I will try to benefit too; and when I fell it my duty to speak unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, through it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my reader's immediate pleasure as well as my own.”

IfsTryingWellsHelpingUseAbleNamesSpeakGivenMy OwnPleasureTalentDutyReaderBenefitsPrejudiceHumbleEndeavour
Author:Anne Bronte
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“Don't have conversations taking place in empty space. Weave in background details of where the action (dialogue is a form of "action") is taking place. Don't have invisible people talking, either. Let the reader see them as they speak - their facial expressions and gestures. And by all means "cue" the speeches to the speakers.”

PeopleWritingMeanActionFormSpeakSpaceTalkingExpressionReaderConversationSpeechEmptyDetailsInvisibleBackgroundsDialogueGesturesSpeakersEmpty SpaceFacialPeople TalkingFacial Expression
Book:Writing for children and teen-agers
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“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
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“They remain dead, the people I try to resuscitate by straining to hear what they say. But the illusion is not pointless, or not quite, even if the reader knows all this better than I do. One thing a book tries to do, beneath the disguise of words and causes and clothes and grief, is show the skeleton and the skeleton dust to come. The author too, like those of whom he speaks, is dead.”

PeopleIfsKnowsTryingBookShowsSpeakCausesGriefOne ThingReaderClothesIllusionDustDisguisePointlessSkeletons
Book:Prisoner of Love
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“I imagine you will always be pinched for money, for time, for a place to work. But I think you will do it. And believe me, it is not a new problem. You are in good company...Your touch is the uncommon touch; you will speak only to the thoughtful reader. And more times than once you will ask yourself whether such readers really exist at all and why you should go on projecting your words into silence like an old crazy actor playing the part of himself to an empty theater.”

ThinkingShouldBelieveProblemActorsAsksSpeakSilenceCompanyImagineCrazyGoes OnReaderEmptyTheaterThoughtfulMore TimeBelieve In MeUncommonGood Company
Author:Wallace Stegner
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“I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities that author has to offer; and that for a host of reasons the bound book is the ideal vehicle for the written word.”

MindBelieveKindStillsBookIdeasReasonLiteratureSpeakLanguageGivenTechnologyWrittenReaderOffersIdealsMiracleBoundsEncountersHostVehicleElsewhereGiven UpWritten WordProfundity
Book:The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
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“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
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“Love and happiness inextricably combined? I wanted love stories to coincide with war stories, I wanted hope for my characters, I wanted a sense of a future. So do they. So does the reader. But perhaps I shouldn't speak for everyone when I say that love and happiness are interdependent. In my own experience, happiness came with love. Specifically, my wife. That's when my own apathy and stasis ended for good.”

DoeWarCharacterStoriesWantedSpeakMy OwnWifeReaderMy WifeLove StoryApathyHappiness And LoveWar StoriesStasisWanted Love
Author:Said Sayrafiezadeh
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“Through Heaven's Gate and Back speaks to all of us that have been abused as children. Lee Thornton's descriptions of the aftereffects of repeated trauma and a profound Near-Death Experience (NDE) are not only true but explained in a way that the reader can take in. It is rare to find a book so well written that it has both sexual abuse and an NDE under one cover. We definitely will be recommending this book to our patients.”

WayWellsChildrenHas BeensBookSpeakHeavenWrittenReaderAbuseProfoundPatientTraumaDescriptionGatesWell WrittenNear DeathNear Death Experience
Author:Charles L. Whitfield
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