Reader Quotes - Page 11

• Special-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Special, Advertising, Realizing

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.159, Vintage

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• Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

  A. E. Housman

  Stupid, Personal Opinions, Perception

  A. E. Housman (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of A. E. Housman (Illustrated)”, p.151, Delphi Classics

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• Your reader is at least as bright as you are

  William Maxwell

  Literature

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• I have often wondered how anyone who does not read, by which I mean daily, having some book going all the time, can make it through life. Indeed if I were required to make a sharp division in the very nature of people, I would be tempted to make it there: readers and nonreaders of books... It is astonishing how the presence or absence of this habit so consistently characterizes an individual in other respects; it is as though it were a kind of barometer of temperament, of personality, even of character. Aside from that, for me it constituted something like sanity insurance.

  William Brinkley

  Book, Character, Mean

  William Brinkley (2013). “The Last Ship: A Novel”, p.65, Penguin

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• A Wired reader told me once, Get a life, which I read from the back of a yacht in the Aegean, while eating fresh sea urchins and drinking terrific Montrachet.

  Nicholas Negroponte

  Drinking, Sea, Design

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• ... I bid farewell to my readers in the hope that they have formed their own opinion as to the meaning of the word "combination".

  Raymond Keene

  Farewell, Chess, Opinion

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• (3) 'IS IT A SYSTEM...?' ... Ultimately, I suspect, this is a question about which the reader should form his own judgement by study of the original text.

  Raymond Keene

  Judgement, Chess, Study

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• Such reproductions may not interest the reader; but after all, this is my autobiography, not his; he is under no obligation to read further in it; he was under none to begin. A modest or inhibited autobiography is written without entertainment to the writer and read with distrust by the reader.

  Neville Cardus

  May, Entertainment, Distrust

  Neville Cardus (2012). “Autobiography”, p.56, Faber & Faber

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• The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Intelligent, Player, Games

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• By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.

  Samuel Johnson

  Distance, Book, Passion

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

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• The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Doe, Culture

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.67, 谷月社

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• Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its own luxuriance are the writers who take advantage of present incidents or characters which strongly interest the passions, and engage universal attention. It is not difficult to obtain readers, when we discuss a question which every one is desirous to understand, which is debated in every assembly, and has divided the nation into parties; or when we display the faults or virtues of him whose public conduct has made almost every man his enemy or his friend.

  Samuel Johnson

  Party, Reading, Passion

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.379

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• Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Change, Reading, Entertainment

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• The most intelligent inspection of any number of fine paintings will not make the observer a painter, nor will listening to a number of operas make the hearer a musician, but good judges of music and painting may so be formed. Chess differs from these. The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Learning, Intelligent, Player

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• The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

  John C. Maxwell

  Inspirational, People, Leader

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• There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.

  Robert Frost

  Life, Motivation, Heart

  Robert Frost, Mark Richardson (2007). “The Collected Prose of Robert Frost”, p.301, Harvard University Press

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• Don't dumb down; always write for your top five percent of readers.

  Martin Amis

  Writing, Dumb, Five

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• The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart.

  Susan Sontag

  Writing, Heart, Stories

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.407, Macmillan

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• I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

  Annie Proulx

  Writing, Thinking, Space

  "Annie Proulx regrets writing Brokeback Mountain? She needs to let it go" by Ryan Gilbey, www.theguardian.com. December 29, 2014.

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• In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard.

  Russell Baker

  Writing, Play, Roles

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• You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Doe, Needs

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• I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.

  Clive James

  Reading, Writing, Interesting

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• I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.

  Elmore Leonard

  Writing, Want

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• Publishing should be a collaboration between authors and their smartest readers - and at some point the distinction should become meaningless.

  Nick Denton

  Collaboration, Should, Distinction

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• Way back in 1989, I got lucky with my first published story when it was selected for the Journey Prize anthology. Then I got lucky three more times. It is astounding to see how many writers published in the anthology have gone on to publish great story collections and novels. The anthology is a windfall for both writer and reader.

  David Bergen

  Journey, Lucky, Three

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