Reader Quotes - Page 39

• The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.

  Alberto Manguel

  Suicide, Reading, Sentimental

  Alberto Manguel (2010). “A Reader on Reading”, p.153, Yale University Press

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• We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in its destruction the warning that all we gather will be lost, but also that much of it can be collected again; we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can serve each singular reader for some secret, singular purpose.

  Alberto Manguel

  Ambition, Men, Imagination

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.36, Vintage Canada

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• This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don't know that I am their reader.

  Alberto Manguel

  Morning, Book, Pages

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “A Reading Diary”, p.177, Vintage Canada

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• I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Progression, Cumulative

  Alberto Manguel (2014). “A History of Reading”, p.36, Penguin

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• Sylvia Day delivers readers to a fantasy world as unique as it is erotic! Ms. Day is an up-and-coming talent in the world of erotic fiction. [on Pleasures of the Night ]

  Toni Blake

  Night, Unique, Erotic

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• I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious.

  Criss Jami

  Book, Appreciate, Sincere

  Criss Jami (2016). “Healology”, p.42, Criss Jami

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• GraceQuest is a gripping story of one man's (and his family's) struggle with tremendous weakness and pain, but it is also a narrative theodicy--defense of God's goodness in spite of the undeniable reality of evil. . . . This is an honest and hard-hitting book about God's grace in and through tremendous loss of health and strength. Readers will find hope and help here if they are open to its message about the God-given 'strength to suffer well.'

  Roger E. Olson

  Pain, Struggle, Book

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• I think a good writer is a mix of confidence (sure that what they're writing is going to appeal to their readers) and uncertainty (what if all these words are crap?). If you're too confident, you get an attitude that seeps through into your writing, affecting the characters and the story. If you're too uncertain, you'll never finish anything.

  Charles de Lint

  Attitude, Writing, Character

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• Labels don't mean much to me one way or another -- except when they close the minds of potential readers. I'd much rather we do away with genres and simply file everything under fiction. I know it can work -- one of my favourite record stores (Waterloo Music in Austin) simply files everything alphabetically and no one seems to have much problem finding what they're looking for.

  Charles de Lint

  Mean, Mind, Austin

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• My theory about writing is that one should write books you'd like to read, but no one else has written yet. So, as long as I stick with that, I'm entertaining myself, and then hopefully my readers as well. I hope to god I realize that I'm repeating myself, if I ever do. But if I don't, I'm sure my readers will let me know.

  Charles de Lint

  Book, Writing, Long

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• To me there's no difference between writing YA and adult except that in YA I make the book a little shorter and the protagonists are teens. The difference is in the readers.

  Charles de Lint

  Book, Writing, Differences

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• The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.

  Charles de Lint

  Fun, Real, Book

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• Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Wise, Reading, Book

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

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• An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Depth

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1938). “The journals of Bronson Alcott”

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• It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: "When in doubt, stick out your tongue" is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost.

  Wilfrid Sheed

  Strong, Real, Mistake

  "Essays in Disguise" by Wilfrid Sheed, Knopf, (pp. xvi-xvii), 1990.

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• The more imagination the reader has ... the more he will do for himself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion and never guess that he is himself chiefly making what he enjoys.

  C. S. Lewis

  Imagination, Suggestions, Hints

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.38, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If you find that the reader of popular romances--however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances--goes back to his old favourites again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry.

  C. S. Lewis

  Romance, Evidence, Again And Again

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.38, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• His hypothesis goes to this - to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.

  William Hazlitt

  Running, Believe, Men

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners”

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• Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Men, Different, Certificates

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1912). “Some Mistakes of Moses”, p.77, Library of Alexandria

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• Your readers should be so compelled to read your copy that they cannot stop reading until they read all of it as if sliding down a slippery slide.

  Joseph Sugarman

  Reading, Slides, Should

  Joseph Sugarman (2012). “The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters”, p.52, John Wiley & Sons

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• A big 'thank you' to George Demetrion for helping readers see that the center does hold. A wise and winsome work.

  Gabriel Fackre

  Wise, Doe, Helping

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• I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.

  Tom Stoppard

  Thinking, Giving, Proud

  "Fictional character: Mageeba". "Night and Day", 1978.

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• The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our consciousness is a staging area, a field of operations for all kinds of enterprises, which make free use of it.

  Saul Bellow

  Powerful, Attention, Use

  1989 Something To Remember Me By, preface.

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• But metre itself implies a passion , i.e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Passion, Mind, Excitement

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1978). “Imagination in Coleridge”

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• Ironically, Henry James' biography comforts me & I long to make known to him his posthumous reputation he wrote, in pain, gave all his life (which is more than I could think of doing I have Ted, will have children but few friends) & the critics insulted & mocked him, readers didn't read him.

  Sylvia Plath

  Children, Pain, Thinking

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.373, Anchor

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