Reader Quotes - Page 37

• You find when you're writing a detective story that you're actually not trying to solve anything. You're trying to stop the reader from solving the puzzle.

  Christopher Bollen

  Writing, Trying, Stories

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

  Christopher Bollen

  Parent, Bigs

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Class, Two, Age

  Thomas De Quincey (1873). “The Works of Thomas De Quincey, "The English Opium Eater": Including All His Contributions to Periodical Literature”, p.237

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• Reader, I wish thee Health, Wealth, Happiness, And may kind Heaven thy Year's Industry bless.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Years, Heaven, Wish

  Benjamin Franklin (1849). “Poor Richard's almanac for 1850-52”, p.46

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• Should a writer single out and point his raillery at particular persons, or satirize the miserable, he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man if he could please himself.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Might, Miserable

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• Most scientists are without exception adorably quirky, and one of the ways of making it more accessible was to try to get readers interested in the person.

  Bill Bryson

  Quirky, Trying, Way

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• There is nothing better fitted to delight the reader than change of circumstances and varieties of fortune.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Change, Delight, Fortune

  "Epistles", V. 12, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96,

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• Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Progress, Robinson Crusoe

  In Hester Lynch Piozzi 'Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson' (1786) p. 281

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• Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader.

  Washington Irving

  Class, America, People

  Washington Irving (2015). “The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more”, p.67, e-artnow

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• Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which delight a reasonable reader.

  John Dryden

  Judging, Criticism, Delight

  John Dryden (1995). “The Works of John Dryden, Volume XII: Plays Ambboyna, The State of Innocence, Aureng-Zebe”, p.87, Univ of California Press

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• O Reader! hast thou eer stood to see The Holly-tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceies Its glossy leaes Ordered by an Intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

  Robert Southey

  Wise, Atheist, Eye

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• In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Reading, Age, Instruction

  Oliver Goldsmith (1834). “The miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.: with a biographical memoir of the author, written expressly for this edition”, p.219

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• From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited any readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.

  Pat Conroy

  Journey, Wire, Revelations

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• The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

  Roland Barthes

  Book, Cost, Birth

  "The Death of the Author" (1968)

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• When I taught, a lot of my students weren't big readers, so they would write something and I realized that they thought it belonged in a book. Like, they didn't know what the inside of a book looked like, you know what I mean?

  David Sedaris

  Book, Writing, Mean

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• When I was young, I was reading anything and anything I could lay my hands on. I was a veracious-to-the-point-of-insane reader.

  Neil Gaiman

  Reading, Hands, Insane

  "Neil Gaiman on libraries, Dr Who, fanatical fans and his dreams" by Michael MacLeod, www.theguardian.com. August 17, 2011.

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• We re-make nature by the act of discovery, in the poem or in the theorem. And the great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself re-creates them. They are the marks of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself, in art or in science, the heart misses a beat.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Art, Discovery, Missing

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “Science and Human Values”, p.18, Faber & Faber

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• The word story is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Writing, Stories, May

  Bruce Chatwin (1997). “Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings 1969-1989”, p.132, Penguin

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• The general ideas which are expressed in sketches, correspond very well to the art often used in poetry... every reader making out the detail according to his own particular imagination... but a painter, when he represents Eve on canvas, is obliged to give a determined form, and his own idea of beauty distinctly expressed.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Ideas, Giving

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edward Malone (1867). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone”, p.91

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• Gentle reader, I was born upon the water - not upon the salt and angry ocean, but upon the fresh and rapid-flowing river.

  Frederick Marryat

  Ocean, Rivers, Water

  Frederick Marryat (1873). “Jacob Faithful”, p.1

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• I should love to do a novel, about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself.

  Patricia Highsmith

  Character, Ordinary, Abnormal

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• Familiar life, tending to sordidness, had been succeeded by remote life, generally idealized; historical detail had been brought in to teach readers who were being entertained.

  Carl Clinton Van Doren

  Historical, Details, Teach

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• There are people already sharing eBooks out there, .. and they do it simply because they love books. You don't buy a second copy of a book, cut the spine off, lay each page on a scanner, run that .tif through an OCR (Optical Character Reader), hand edit the resulting output for errors and then post it online if you don't love the book. it can up to 80 hours to turn a printed novel into an eBook. I figure if someone out there is willing to put in 80 hours of work promoting my book, then I'd prefer they do it in a way that gives a better return to me.

  Cory Doctorow

  Running, Book, Character

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• The novelist has more and more to say to readers who have less and less time to read: where to find the energy to engage a culture in crisis when the crisis consists in the impossibility of engaging with the culture?

  Jonathan Franzen

  Energy, Novelists, Culture

  Jonathan Franzen (2007). “How to Be Alone: Essays”, p.65, Macmillan

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• If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

  Yann Martel

  Writing, Fiction, Genre

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