Quotes About Readers

A reader is entitled to believe what he or she believes is consonant with the facts of the book. It is not unusual that readers take away something that is spiritually at variance from what I myself experienced. That's not to say readers make up the book they want. We all have to agree on the facts. But readers bring their histories and all sets of longings. A book will pluck the strings of those longings differently among different readers.

There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers.

Critics are biased, and so are readers. (Indeed, a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers soon discover how to allow for the windage of their own and a critic's prejudices.

I am of the generation of writers who can get instant feedback from readers within hours of publication. The fan forum is extraordinary - readers from all over the world coming together to discuss, argue and debate scenes and characters from a novel. They add a layer to the story that I cannot write and yes, I will participate in that conversation and answer questions. After all, they are the people I'm writing for and their enthusiasm and questions really pushes me to raise the bar.

The most reward experience is having another writer come up to you and say that they started writing because they read my books. That is how writing as a profession continues: readers becomes writers who inspire new readers.

You may be somebody who writes best for a small press that doesn't pay very well, but you might have a fascinating and intricate style that might not appeal to as many readers but will be incredibly meaningful to the readers you have. Truly, that's as wonderful if not more wonderful.

I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.

I live in the same house I’ve lived in for 25 years. I haven’t gone off and bought mansions, you know, even though my subject is living… living in a mansion wouldn’t do for my readers. I have to keep my credibility alive with my readers, so we’re in the same place. I just make that place nicer and nicer. And… and that’s a secret. And people don’t know that. People think, oh, she lives in this fabulous place, it’s the same old place. It started out like a farm, it got to be a farmette, then it got to be an estatelet. I built a wall, it helped a lot. But it’s the same place, the same grounded nature.

Historically different groups find different things in each comics, as with *X-Men*. Gay readers find parallels to living a closeted lifestyle or choosing to come out and be openly gay. Black readers find a relevance to their lives growing up in America as a black guy. Picked-on brainy kids find a metaphor for being an outsider. It's a simple enough, and direct enough metaphor that it has different shades for different people. And so each reader to some degree gets out of it what they bring to it. That's one of the things I think that makes *X-Men* such a strong property.

I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.

For me it's more important that I outline all the facets of a controversial issue and let the reader make up his or her mind. I don't care if readers change their minds, but I would like readers to ask themselves why their opinion is what it is.

One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.

Respect and love your readers. Write for the reader.

Then basically what was happening was that it was the middle '80s, and Rolling Stone realized that a lot of their readers had voted for [Ronald] Reagan, and they were going, "Gosh! We need a Republican! Does anybody know a Republican? Wait a minute! I think P.J.'s a Republican!"

Trade book publishing is by nature a cottage industry, decentralized, improvisational, personal; best performed by small groups of like-minded people, devoted to their craft, jealous of their autonomy, sensitive to the needs of writers and to the diverse interests of readers. If money were their primary goal, these people would probably have chosen other careers.

To grow, to become spiritually alive, and vibrant, you really have to struggle. Without struggle, you do not move at all...I would appreciate it if readers who come to my work would try very, very, very hard not to think narrowly as we are taught to think in America.

I believe my readers are crazy about their parents and want to be just like them when they grow up

One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.

I always point people to the article '1,000 True Fans' by Kevin Kelly. If you choose your thousand ideal customers or readers properly and find the single author blog that targets that audience, you never have to do any more marketing. You're done. That is a lesson that very few product developers and marketers have learned, and it's unfortunate.

A book is always a dialogue with other readers and other books.

My writerly aspirations are pretty simple: to provide as many readers as possible with the same sort of wonderful immersion that I myself get from fantasy novels - and to make enough money to help feed my kids while doing so.

An author describing the methods of intensive farming, or the excesses of sport hunting, or even the harsher uses of animals in science writes with confidence that most readers will share his sense of concern and indignation. Sounding the call to action-convincing people that change is not only necessary, but actually possible-is more problematic. In protecting animals from cruelty, it is always just one step from the mainstream to the fringe. To condemn the wrong is obvious, to suggest its abolition radical.

Only that, nothing more - a tiny beam of light to show some hidden aspect of reality, to help decipher and understand it and thus to initiate, if possible, a change in the conscience of some readers.

If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book.

I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable.

I like to think that each book I start is a completely new departure But I’ve learned that whatever you do, readers will have no difficulty assimilating it into what you’ve done before.

I'm probably the most loquacious author when it comes to my dedications. The reason is there is some symbolism there. I've been writing these books, bringing these stories to my readers who I love so much, and I have a greater love for my family.

Students will read if we give them the books, the time, and the enthusiastic encouragement to do so. If we make them wait for the one unit a year in which they are allowed to choose their own books and become readers, they may never read at all. To keep our students reading, we have to let them.

I know that some readers think (The High King) should have ended differently. I cried for three days afterwards.

The shimmering, lucid tones and silver melancholy of I'll Be Right There give readers a South Korea peopled with citizens fighting for honor and intellectual freedom, and longing for love and solace. Kyung-Sook Shin's characters have unforgettable voices-it's no wonder she has so many fans.

I focus on the elements of a movie that are meant to invisibly affect me as a viewer. The edges. As an author, Im aware of how the subconscious things can pluck at a readers emotions, and I love it when filmmakers do the same.

There are so many things hinted at that will be fun to reveal in depth. For years, fans have made it abundantly and enthusiastically clear that they want the same thing, so now seems like the perfect time to give readers the story of how the Maze began.

I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.

But as I wrote the book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet], I tried to write it as clearly and directly and passionately as possible just thinking of communicating to readers who might want to learn about this great thinker and be inspired by him as I was.

Eva Stachniak has given readers a thrilling glimpse into the scandals and secrets at the heart of the Russian Imperial court. With deft prose and exquisite detail, Stachniak has resurrected one of the most compelling ages in history. Turn off the phones and lock the doors—you will not put it down.

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.

The little dog-eared books in the meeting-house proved poor reading ... So many of them were about unnaturally good children who never did wrong, and unnaturally bad children who never did right. At the end there was always the word MORAL, in big capital letters, as if the readers were supposed to be too blind to find it for themselves, and it had to be put directly across the path for them to stumble over.

Don't use metaphors in fantasy; your readers will take them literally. Or they may take them figuratively - but if so, they'll also take your magics and transformations figuratively. Either way, you're in trouble.

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

What I eventually realized is that the real business of books is not done by awards committees or people who turn trees into paper or editors or agents or even writers. We're all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.

Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.

As populations crowd toward the ocean's edge and the sea encroaches menacingly toward the land, John R. Gillis looks at the history of the world from a fresh perspective and enables readers to see it in a new light. That he has managed to do so in a single conceptual work is nothing short of astounding.

It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.

There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why.

Unless you're a terribly bad writer, you are never going to have too many readers.

here are the top three global resources getting scarcer in the twenty-first century: ozone layer, rain forest, people eager to read the fiction of others. That's right, folks. For the first time in I believe written history, there are far more fiction writers on earth than fiction readers.

If readers like The Thorn and the Blossom, which I would call literary fantasy, I think they would like books such as Elizabeth Hand's Mortal Love, Catherynne Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen.

I cannot just write a frivolous book, a la-di-da book. Everything isn't la-di-da. There is something that's going to pull you up short. I want to reassure young readers. I want to comfort them, to not fear the unexpected.