Best reader & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“I guess I think I'm writing for people who are smarter than I am, because then I'll be doing something that's worth their time. I'd be very afraid to write from a position where I consciously thought I was smarter than most of my readers.”

People Thinking Writing Position Reader Smarter

Author:Susan Sontag

“I wish my prose to be transparentI don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.”

Want Writing Looks Would Be Wish Written Reader Goodness Prose Transparent Describing Want Him

Author:V. S. Naipaul

“The art of writing is not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind.”

Writing Mind Art Feelings Seems Order Imagine Fine Reader Symbols Phrases Thoughts And Feelings Art Of Writing

Book:The Principles of Success in Literature

Source: The Principles of Success in Literature

“Nearly all the writing of our time is likely to disappear in a hundred years. Certainly most readers - and nearly all critics - feel that [Kurt] Vonnegut started to repeat himself, to grow increasingly self-indulgent and meandering, and to sometimes just blather in his later work. But his books up to "Slaughterhouse-Five" do possess a distinctiveness that will insure some kind of permanence, if only in the history of the 1960s and of science fiction.”

“No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth.”

Writing Firsts Language Reader Fifty Shade Fourth Grey Paragraph Charitable Fifty Shades Shades Of Grey

Author:Anthony Lane

“I don't want to write things that people don't want to read. I would have no pleasure in producing something that sold 600 copies but that was considered very wonderful. I would prefer to sell 20,000 copies because the readers loved it. When I write books I don't actually think about the market in that way. I just tell myself the story. I don't think I'm talking to a 10-year-old boy or a six-year-old girl. I just write on the level the story seems to call for.”

People Thinking Way Want Writing Years Book Stories Seems Girl Pleasure Levels Talking Boys Wonderful Reader Six Sells Copies Six Year Olds

Author:Emily Rodda

“Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe. As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin, So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul: The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture, And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed.”

Writing Mind Heart Soul Hands Eye Vision Rocks Cold Reader Eternal Tongue Ruins Witness Plastic Coins Fossils Clay Statues Eloquent Reeds Departed Mortar Scribes Exactitude Departed Soul

Author:F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Children make better readers than adults. They read as carefully as I write; adults read as a means of getting off to sleep. I get letters saying 'I have read your book seventeen times.' If you're an adult novelist and you get that letter, you should be afraid. You're being stalked. Kids always read them seventeen times!”

Ifs Should Writing Mean Children Book Kids Sleep Reader Adults Letters Novelists Seventeen

Author:Daniel Pinkwater

“This book reminds me of James Gleick's Chaos. The ideas and stories in Loving and Hating Mathematics are timely, interesting, and sometimes even profound. The authors, writing for nonspecialists, take pains to explain technical ideas in nontechnical language, and the book should interest general readers as well as a large mathematical audience.”

Should Writing Wells Book Ideas Sometimes Stories Pain Hate Language Interest Interesting Audience Reader Mathematics Profound Chaos Mathematical Timely

Author:Steven G. Krantz

“There are very real differences between science fiction and realistic fiction, between horror and fantasy, between romance and mystery. Differences in writing them, in reading them, in criticizing them. Vive les différences! They're what gives each genre its singular flavor and savor, its particular interest for the reader - and the writer.”

Giving Writing Real Romance Reading Interest Differences Fiction Fantasy Mystery Particular Reader Horror Science Fiction Genre Criticize Realistic Flavor Realistic Fiction

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.”

Ifs Should Writing Persons Self Enough Expression Reader Aim Seven Patient Self Expression

Book:The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature

Source: The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature

“Shirley Jackson said that a confused reader is an antagonistic reader, and I live by that. It's okay to start anywhere, and to let yourself write a big sloppy overly-detailed first draft. You just jump in, knowing that the water will be cold at first, but no one is making you swim.”

Writing Firsts Said Bigs Water Knowing Cold Reader Okay Confused Live By Swim Sloppy

Author:Anne Lamott

“When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.”

Writing Real Light Ability Reader Conscious Simplicity Insight Caring

Book:Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“In the end all books are written for your friends. The problem after writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was that now I no longer know whom of the millions of readers I am writing for; this upsets and inhibits me. It's like a million eyes are looking at you and you don't really know what they think.”

Thinking Knows Writing Years Book Ends Problem Eye Millions Written Reader Solitude Hundred Upset One Hundred Years Of Solitude

Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable, and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn’t be writing.”

People Thinking Writing Community Reader Appreciate Democratic Core Idiot Edits Entry Misconception Knowledgeable Snobby

Author:Jimmy Wales

“I must suppose that reading wonderful writers may, inadvertently, teach an avid reader a great deal -- not only about life and other matters, but about how to write. Therefore doubtless I have benefited from frequent immersions in the glowing genius of others. It would be nice to think so. (I do actually think so). But to improve my skills will never be the prompting force of my reading -- that's just literary lust.”

Thinking Writing May Matter Would Be Reading Force Deals Teach Nice Wonderful Reader Genius Skills Lust Being Nice Glowing Avid Immersion

Author:Tanith Lee

“You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.”

“There is no ideal length, but you develop a little interior gauge that tells you whether or not you're supporting the house or detracting from it. When a piece gets too long, the tension goes out of it. That wordtensionhas an animal insistence for me. A piece of writing rises and falls with tension. The writer holds one end of the rope and the reader holds the other endis the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?”

Writing Littles Long Doe Ends Matter Fall Next House Animal Pieces Reader Ideals Sentences Tension Length Interiors Rope Insistence Gauges Rise And Fall Does It Matter

Author:John Jeremiah Sullivan

“To write and speak correctly is certainly necessary; but it is not sufficient. A derivation correctly presented in the book or on the blackboard may be inaccessible and uninstructive, if the purpose of the successive steps is incomprehensible, if the reader or listener cannot understand how it was humanly possible to find such an argument....”

Ifs Writing May Book Purpose Speak Steps Reader Argument Sufficient Listeners Inaccessible Blackboard

Author:George Polya

“My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.”

Want Giving Writing Trying Jobs Reader

Author:China Mieville

“coincident with the explosive growth of research, the art of writing science suffered a grave setback, and the stultifying convention descended that the best scientific prose should sound like a non-human author addressing a mechanical reader. ... We injure ourselves when we fail to make our discipline as clear and vibrant as we can to students - prospective scientists - and to the public who pay the taxes.”

Source: Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age

“Talking Taboo is a groundbreaking book. This chorus of bold female voices is presenting the church with an opportunity to engage real but all too frequently avoided or unseen issues impacting countless Christian women today. Their candid essays cover a wide spectrum of perspectives. Readers will resonate with some and be shocked by others. Talking Taboo took courage to write. Reading taboo takes courage too. So buckle up and brace yourself for an eye-opening but vitally important read!”

“As far as I know, Clifford Pickover is the first mathematician to write a book about areas where math and theology overlap. Are there mathematical proofs of God? Who are the great mathematicians who believed in a deity? Does numerology lead anywhere when applied to sacred literature? Pickover covers these and many other off-trail topics with his usual verve, humor, and clarity. And along the way the reader will learn a great deal of serious mathematics.”

“It starts with the writing. We have to think of all these characters - we have to treat them all equally. We have to think of them as having an interior life and having motivations. When I'm drawing female characters, I'm looking for that. I'm looking for subtext. I'm looking for ways to make the reader relate to them in a way that goes beyond the pure aesthetic value. You know, just drawing an attractive woman really gets kind of boring after a while.”

“Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.”

Source: Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works

“Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.”

Writing Littles Use Understanding Common Too Much Reader Lays Details Disgusting Multitudes Comprehension Niceties

Book:The Rambler: In Four Volumes..

Source: The Rambler: In Four Volumes..

“Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.”

Writing Reader Please Endeavour

Book:Works

Source: Works

“General irregularities are known in time to remedy themselves. By the constitution of ancient Egypt, the priesthood was continually increasing, till at length there was no people beside themselves; the establishment was then dissolved, and the number of priests was reduced and limited. Thus among us, writers will, perhaps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found, and then the ambition of writing must necessarily cease.”

People Writing Found Numbers Known Reader Ambition Constitution Ancient Cease Priests Length Establishment Remedy Egypt Priesthood Ancient Egypt Irregularity

Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius

“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.”

Ifs Men Writing May Might Happens Speak Grows Sound Reader Periods Understood Advantage Notion Sentences Every Man Ease Consideration Sentiments Elegant Transfers

Book:The Idler: With Additional Essays

Source: The Idler: With Additional Essays

“Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances.”

Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752

“Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.”

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius

“If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations.”

Ifs Writing Literature Knowing Reader Expectations Categories Framework

Author:Nora Roberts

“The rules that I adhere to are the rules of minimalism. And those rules kind of force writing to be more filmic... to have the immediacy and accessibility of film so that the reader really has to fill in a lot of the details.”

Writing Kind Film Force Reader Details Minimalism Accessibility Immediacy

Author:Chuck Palahniuk

“Chats are so new to newspapers, historically. But they're so incredibly valuable because editors/reporters/columnists get to find out what's on the minds of our readers, what you think we should be writing about, what ticks you off, what makes you happy. Sometimes it can confirm what you think readers are interested in; sometimes it can turn you around 180 degrees.”

Thinking Should Writing Mind Sometimes Turns Reader Degrees Valuable Newspapers Editors Reporters Make You Happy Tick Columnists

Author:Michael Wilbon

“There really is no difference in the actual writing or plotting. I choose to tell different stories for the younger reader and, of course, I would never put sex and extreme violence in a YA book. But writing for adults and children requires the same care and attention.”

Writing Children Book Different Stories Care Courses Sex Differences Attention Violence Reader Adults Extremes

Author:Michael Scott

“Each day is a surprise - and each day I learn something wonderful and new. Both in writing thrillers and in reporting the news, I work to change the world a little bit. I want readers - and viewers - to be surprised and captivated and even inspired.”

World Want Writing Littles Bits Wonderful Reader Little Bit News Surprise Inspired Changing The World Each Day Viewers Thrillers Captivated

Author:Hank Phillippi Ryan

“I don't think you could teach someone to be a genius, but you can certainly teach them to not make rookie mistakes and to look at writing the way a writer looks at writing, and not just the way a reader looks at writing. There are a lot of techniques and skills that can be taught that will be helpful to anybody, no matter how gifted they are, and I think writing programs can be very good for people.”

People Thinking Way Writing Looks Matter Mistake Teach Taught Reader Genius Skills Program Very Good Technique Helpful Gifted Rookies

Author:Michael Chabon

“Study your reader first - your product second. If you understand his reactions, and present those phases of your product that relate to his needs, then you cannot help but write a good letter.”

Ifs Needs Writing Firsts Helping Study Products Reader Letters Reactions Relate Phases

Book:Robert Collier Copywriting Course - Masters of Marketing Secrets: Learn to Write Sales Letters That Pay

Source: Robert Collier Copywriting Course - Masters of Marketing Secrets: Learn to Write Sales Letters That Pay

“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.”

Thinking Way Want Writing Persons Reading Rooms Creative Reader Higher Disappear Tricks Indian Passive Rope

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.”

Ifs Writing Humans Heart Ideas Stories Sound My Own Particular Reader My Heart Demand Flesh Setting Settings Clothings Human Experience

Author:Katherine Paterson

“In old days the public didn't really mind much about accuracy, but nowadays readers take it upon themselves to write to authors on every possible occasion, pointing out flaws.”

Writing Mind Reader Occasions Flaws Pointing Accuracy Old Days

Author:Agatha Christie

“The aim of my writing is to utterly remove the distance between author and reader so that the book becomes a sort of semipermeable membrane through which feelings, ideas, nutrients pass.”

Writing Book Ideas Feelings Reader Aim Distance Remove Nutrients Membranes

Author:Erica Jong

“Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.”

“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."”

People Thinking Writing Humans Littles Persons Bigs Reader Scene Yeah Average Details Breakfast Showers Untrue

Author:Don Winslow

“I have a really good idea of who my readers are and always write with a sensitivity to my audience. I use the F word when necessary, but there are words I won't use, mainly because I don't like them. I don't write about body parts when I write about sex. It's not about the physiological, it's more important for teens to read about the emotional aspects. I do think there are times when self-censorship is important.”

Thinking Writing Important Ideas Self Use Body Sex Audience Emotional Reader Aspect Good Ideas Censorship Teens Sensitivity Physiological Self Censorship

Author:Ellen Hopkins

“When you write a book, you want to have fidelity to the character. Characters and their emotions guide the structure of the novel. The author is aware that there's a certain amount of information she/he has to provide in order to satisfy the reader, knowing that she/he has set something up that must be paid off, but this payment must be made while maintaining fidelity to the characters.”

Want Writing Made Book Character Certain Order Emotion Novel Knowing Information Reader Amount Paid Structure Guides Maintaining Payment Fidelity Paid Off

Author:David Bezmozgis

“Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.”

Writing Trying Reader Bores

Author:Rita Dove

“Readers soon tire of prefaces, and skip them, and so the labor of writing them is lost.”

Writing Book Lost Reader Labor Tire Skip

Book:Ladies' Magazine

Source: Ladies' Magazine

“History is not truth versus falsehoods, but a mixture of both, a mélange of tendencies, reactions, dreams, errors, and power plays. What's important is what we make of it; its moral use. By writing history, we can widen readers' thinking and deepen their sympathies in every direction. Perhaps history should show us not how to control the world, but how to enlarge, deepen, and discipline ourselves.”

Thinking World Should Writing Important Play Use Shows Dream Moral History Reader Discipline Errors Reactions Tendencies Falsehood Versus Mixtures What's Important Writing History Power Play

Book:Heart Mountain

Source: Heart Mountain

“Of one thing the reader can be certain: the more easily anything reads, the harder it has been to write.”

Writing Has Beens Certain One Thing Reader Harder

Book:Writing is Work

Source: Writing is Work

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