Reader Quotes - Page 5

• I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in.

  Tracy Kidder

  Book, Writing, Effort

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• I don't believe in writing anything that I don't know about or haven't researched about personally. I like to transport the reader to places, and in order to do that I have to do the research.

  Jackie Collins

  Believe, Writing, Order

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• I have written 20 books, and each one is like having a baby. Writing is not easy; some people want to write books but just can't put a story together. I can put together a story that interests both me and my readers.

  Jackie Collins

  Baby, Book, Writing

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• We expect a great man to be a good reader.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Men, Lovers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.178, Рипол Классик

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• No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophy, Discipline, Forever

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “HENRY DAVID THOREAU - Ultimate Collection: 6 Books, 26 Essays & 60+ Poems, Including Translations. Biographies & Letters (Illustrated): Walden, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada, Canoeing in the Wilderness, Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts, Life Without Principle, Excursions, Poems of Nature, Familiar Letters…”, p.53, e-artnow

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• In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.

  Edward Gibbon

  Intellectual, Age, Climate

  Edward Gibbon, M. Guizot (François) (1854). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.529

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• Here is my challenge. Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first - I have been asking it for some time - awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Faith, Religious, Thinking

  "An Atheist Responds" by Christopher Hitchens, www.washingtonpost.com. July 14, 2007.

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• What is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.

  Philip K. Dick

  Statistics, Belief, Subjective

  Philip K. Dick (1990). “Beyond Lies the Wub”

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• When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Writing, Needs, Literature

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• What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Powerful, Believe, Reading

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• A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Wise, Writing, Literature

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• You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Struggle, Writing, Typewriters

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• But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that

  Guillermo Cabrera Infante

  Writing, Mind, Doe

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• Solid scriptural theology should be valued in the church. Books in which Scripture is reverently regarded as the only rule of faith and practice-- books in which Christ and the Holy Ghost have their rightful office-- books in which justification, and sanctification, and regeneration, and faith, and grace, and holiness are clearly, distinctly, and accurately delineated and exhibited, these are the only books which do real good. Few things need reviving more than a taste for such books as these among readers.

  J. C. Ryle

  Real, Book, Practice

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• Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face.

  Joy Williams

  Writing, Comfort, Faces

  Joy Williams (2015). “Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals”, p.181, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Reader look, not on his picture but his book.

  Ben Jonson

  Book, Looks

  First Folio Shakespeare "To the Reader" l. 9 (1623)

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• Nobody knows that in reading we are re-living our temptations to be a poet. All readers who have a certain passion for reading, nurture and repress, through reading, the desire to become a writer.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Reading, Passion, Temptation

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• Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.

  Mary Oliver

  Trying, Together, Want

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• ATLANTA NIGHTS is sure to please the reader who enjoys this sort of thing.

  Raymond E. Feist

  Night, Atlanta, Enjoy

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• Everybody has felt at one time or another that everyone else in the world had a better shot than they did, so when you engage that, you engage the reader, and I think you create a character that brings the reader more fully into the story.

  Robin Hobb

  Character, Thinking, Stories

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• The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Catholic, Musician

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• Who knows why some words ignite the hearts of some readers while others are like wet matches that won't light.

  Phil Cousineau

  Heart, Light, Ignite

  Phil Cousineau (2008). “Stoking the Creative Fires: 9 Ways to Rekindle Passion and Imagination”, p.12, Conari Press

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• Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

  Lynn Abbey

  Commitment, Writing, Two

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• The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.

  Jane Smiley

  Ideas, Tolerance, Individuality

  Jane Smiley (2014). “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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• I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.

  Shirley Jackson

  Stories, Village, Violence

  Shirley Jackson (2008). “The Lottery”, p.22, The Creative Company

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