Reader Quotes - Page 34

• Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Pain, Writing, Journey

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.6, Courier Corporation

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• The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Writing, Spectators, Adversaries

  "Ten rules for writing fiction". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

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• Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.

  William Zinsser

  Memories, Writing, Thinking

  William Zinsser (2005). “Writing about Your Life: A Journey Into the Past”, p.7, Da Capo Press

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• A novel is a conversation starter, and if the author isn't there for the after-party, both the writer and the reader are missing a lot.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Party, Missing, Conversation

  Interview with Laura Rosenfeld, www.seventeen.com. September 01, 2011.

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• I adore book-to-film adaptations when they're done well, and I'm more lenient than many readers when it comes to what counts as 'done well.' For me, the most important thing is that the film maintains the spirit of the original book.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Book, Important, Done

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• I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Queens, Kings, Real

  "How to Win the 2012 Fiction Contest!" by Laura Rosenfeld, www.seventeen.com. September 01, 2011.

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• We wanted to describe society from our left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality.

  Maj Sjowall

  Book, Views, People

  "The queen of crime". Interview with Louise France, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2009.

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• I was a precocious reader.

  Norman Spinrad

  Precocious

  Author Q&A, www.penguinrandomhouse.com.

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• I have a certain sensibility that I bring to my writing that comes from knowing two things: what I as a reader like to read, and what as a writer I am capable of. I know my own limits. I know there are things I cannot do.

  Paullina Simons

  Writing, Two, Knowing

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• Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Book, Reading, Writing

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• The truth is, everything ultimately comes down to the relationship between the reader and the writer and the characters. Does or does not a character address moral being in a universal and important way? If it does, then it's literature.

  Whitley Strieber

  Character, Important, Doe

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• I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Writing, People, Rooms

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• When you're kept by a patron you don't have to duke it out in the media marketplace for dollars and for readers. In some ways that's a blessing because it takes a lot of pressure off you.

  David Talbot

  Blessing, Media, Dollars

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• I've always been a reader and a writer.

  Laini Taylor

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• Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.

  Laini Taylor

  Real, Book, Character

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• I don't write to give joy to readers but to give them a conscience.

  Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  Writing, Giving, Joy

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• A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

  Jack Vance

  Stories, Environment, Supposed To Be

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• That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.

  Walter Jon Williams

  Doors, Editors, Want

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• If you want to be a leader, you've got to be a reader.

  David A. Noebel

  Business, Leader, Want

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• We must be forewarned that only rarely does a text easily lend itself to the reader's curiosity... the reading of a text is a transaction between the reader and the text, which mediates the encounter between the reader and writer. It is a composition between the reader and the writer in which the reader "rewrites" the text making a determined effort not to betray the author's spirit.

  Paulo Freire

  Reading, Learning, Effort

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• A reader does not suddenly comprehend what is being read or studied, in a snap, miraculously. Comprehension needs to be worked forged, by those who read and study; as subjects of the action, they must seek to employ appropriate instruments in order to carry out the task. For this very reason, reading and studying form a challenging task, one requiring patience and perseverance.

  Paulo Freire

  Perseverance, Reading, Learning

  Paulo Freire (2005). “Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those who Dare Teach”

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• Every genuinely literary style, from the high authorial voice to Foster Wallace and his footnotes-within-footnotes, requires the reader to see the world from somewhere in particular, or from many places. So every novelist's literary style is nothing less than an ethical strategy - it's always an attempt to get the reader to care about people who are not the same as he or she is.

  Zadie Smith

  Writing, Voice, People

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• People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?

  Neil Postman

  Book, Writing, People

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.13, Penguin

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• ...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.

  Olive Ann Burns

  Meaningful, Real, Book

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• I have myself always been terrified of plagiarism - of being accused of it, that is. Every writer is a thief, though some of us are more clever than others at disguising our robberies. The reason writers are such slow readers is that we are ceaselessly searching for things we can steal and then pass off as our own: a natty bit of syntax, a seamless transition, a metaphor that jumps to its target like an arrow shot from an aluminum crossbow.

  Joseph Epstein

  Clever, Writing, Arrows

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