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Reader Quotes

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Reader Quotes

“Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn't enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate's trade.”

WayFeelsArtSometimesEnoughUseDifficultReaderEvidenceTradeLaysBonesTricksLatterExplainingMarrowDispassionate
Book:The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
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“A newspaper can follow the compulsions, the desires of the readers. Take the English evening newspapers - they are following the readers' desires when they are interested only in the royal family gossip. But even the most objective, serious newspaper in the world designs the way in which the reader could or should think. That's unavoidable.”

ThinkingWorldWayShouldDesireDesignSeriousReaderFollowingNewspapersObjectivesEveningGossipRoyalCompulsionRoyal Family
Author:Umberto Eco
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“Most of what I read is for reviewing purposes or related to something I want to write about. It's slightly utilitarian. I definitely miss that sense of being a disinterested reader who's reading purely for the pleasure of imagining his way into emotional situations and vividly realized scenes in nineteenth-century France or late nineteenth-century Russia.”

WayWantWritingPurposeReadingPleasureSituationCenturyMissingEmotionalReaderSceneLateRussiaFranceRelatedNineteenth CenturyDisinterestedUtilitarian
Author:Pankaj Mishra
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“You can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical a novel, you get into the dangers that the French novel has discovered in the past 50 or 60 years. And you get into a sort of aridity. No, you have to have real, identifiable people to whom the reader reacts in a way as if they were real people.”

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Author:Julian Barnes
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“Place yourself in the background; write in a way that comes naturally; work from a suitable design; write with nouns and verbs; do not overwrite; do not overstate; avoid the use of qualifiers; do not affect a breezy style; use orthodox spelling; do not explain too much; avoid fancy words; do not take shortcuts as the cost of clarity; prefer the standard to the offbeat; make sure the reader knows who is speaking; do not use dialect; revise and rewrite.”

KnowsWayWritingUseToo MuchStyleDesignReaderCostStandardsBackgroundsClarityFancyOrthodoxSuitableVerbsShortcutsSpellingNounsDialectBreezyOffbeat
Author:E. B. White
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“So, what we do in Love Dare for Parents is walk through the principles that help you win the hearts of your children and find that balance as a parent. As we all know, parenting can be wonderful and exasperating at times. So, we walk through the principles of demonstrating love to your kids in the most appropriate and healthy ways. We learned a great deal doing it and we believe the readers will too.”

KnowsWayBelieveHeartChildrenHelpingKidsWinningParentWalksDealsPrinciplesWonderfulReaderBalanceHealthyOur ChildrenDareYour ChildrenAppropriateDemonstratingLove Dare
Author:Alex Kendrick
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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.”

WayYearsLongTwoFacesDiesKeysReaderAmbitionCaughtTreatedNosesGentleHappy LifeComplaintsFarewellMy AmbitionKeyboardsHarness
Author:Isaac Asimov
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“You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into an entertainment. Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of devices will do the job.... These seeming amusements in fact become your 'style.' When we say we like the style of certain writers, what we mean is that we like their personality as they express it on paper.”

WayGivingWritingMeanFactsJobsCertainNumbersStylePersonalityReaderPaperSurpriseEntertainmentDevicesAmusementEnjoyableSeeming
Author:William Zinsser
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“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.”

IfsWayGivingFeelsMadeCertainOrderTurnsFightingSoundHalfSunMiddleEventsColorWindReaderTasteLogicRefuseFleshSensesTalesShirtsConvinceAssaultTextureSleevesImprobableBelievableInsistenceFluttering
Author:Ray Bradbury
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“...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell.”

ThinkingWorldWayWantFeelsWritingBelieveWellsKindStoriesDreamMightFictionFantasyAudienceReaderIntelligentScience FictionPrivilegeTalesHonourOpen MindedScience Fiction And Fantasy
Author:Orson Scott Card
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“Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer's head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different.”

IfsWayMayBookDifferentPlayLyingSoundBlackVoicePiecesHeardAirReaderMusicianPagesLettersMarkMusicalScoreInterpretationFrozenAlphabetViolinist
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age, since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information by throwing in the reader's way piles of lumber in which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter, peradventure interspersed.”

WayBookMatterAgeEvilInformationSeriousReaderObstaclesEnormousBranchesThrowingAcquisitionScrapMultiplicationLumber
Book:Complete Collection of Edgar Allan Poe - 170+ eBooks (Complete Tales, Poems, Novels, Essays, Miscellaneous, Play)
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“I want each character to be as unique as possible. I want them to reflect something of who they are in the way that they move and in how their bodies work. That was foremost in my head when I was writing Salvage: I wanted every gesture, every little movement, to really carry meaning and communicate meaning to the reader. I was very conscious of that when I was writing.”

WayWantWritingLittlesCharacterBodyWantedMovingMovementReaderUniqueConsciousCommunicateGesturesSalvageBody Work
Author:Jesmyn Ward
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“I allude to Back to the Future in the 1985 story to let folks know it was an inspiration and because it literally was the most time-travelly bit of pop culture we had in the mid 80's. I can talk about their tools for considering change. First, the book is metafictive in a traditional sense where I'm showing and telling the reader that the act of writing and reading is a reflexive way to push boundaries of real and literal time travel. Writers and readers are time travellers. The question is what we do with that time we traveled when we leave a book, leave a page.”

KnowsWayWritingFirstsI CanBookRealStoriesInspirationCultureReadingBitsReaderPagesToolsFolksPopsBoundariesTraditionalTime TravelConsideringTraveledPop CultureLiteralTravellerWriting And Reading
Author:Kiese Laymon
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“By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.”

IfsWayKindMeanSimpleClearReaderUnderstoodAreasClarityGroundedComfortingDisorientation
Author:Billy Collins
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“I wasn't trying to write a corrective novel - that would just end up tasting like medicine, and I tried to stay away from polemics as best I could. I think that, if anything, Fobbit is my way of showing readers there's another side to war - the backstage of combat, if you will. If you play a word association game with Americans and say "war," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Soldiers running across a battlefield through a hail of bullets, right? Rambo, smoke, explosions. In Fobbit, I hope readers will see something a little different”

IfsThinkingWayWritingTryingMindFirstsLittlesDifferentWarEndsPlayRunningGamesSidesNovelReaderMedicineSoldierSmokeMy WayCombatAssociationBulletsExplosionsBattlefieldsHailTastingPolemicsRambo
Author:Dave Abrams
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“It's disingenous for me to say that I wasn't trying to write a moral novel. By its very nature as a novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit steps into the political conversation. There's no way to avoid that. I can appreciate that readers are probably going to line up on one side of the novel or the other. I hope they go to those polar extremes, actually.”

WayWritingTryingI CanWarPoliticalSidesLinesMoralStepsNovelReaderConversationAppreciateIraqExtremesIraq War
Author:Dave Abrams
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“To keep the readers interested, and coming back, and to keep coming up with new and exciting ways to present stories and to present the character in a reflection of the times, is an absolutely incredible accomplishment. Hats off to all these people who have done such incredible creative work and still do every week.”

PeopleWayStillsDoneCharacterStoriesCreativeWeekReaderReflectionExcitingIncrediblesAccomplishmentHatsComing BackCreative WorkHats Off
Author:Michael Uslan
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“I'm more than a little suspicious of humor in poems, because I think it can at times be a way of getting a reaction out of a reader, or an audience, that is something closer to relief: i.e., thank god this isn't poetry, but stand-up comedy. Some poets are really funny, but more often poets are fourth rate stand up comics at best. But they benefit from the sheer relief of the audience.”

ThinkingWayLittlesAudienceComedyPoetReaderBenefitsRateReactionsReliefThank GodFourthSheerSuspiciousStand Up Comedy
Author:Matthew Zapruder
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