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The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work.
Robert FrostThere'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.
Peter SchjeldahlI have a total responsibility to the reader. The reader has to trust me and never feel betrayed. 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. And it's appropriate, because the writer is getting paid and the reader isn't.
Jonathan SantloferI think the press has an interest in communicating to its viewers or readers, and their viewers or readers drive profit for those news organizations, so I think those news organizations have a certain bias toward their own readers. Yeah, I think they are a special interest. Of course they are.
Mark McKinnonOnly a very specific kind of writer keeps their reader in mind while working. Such writers don't want to irk their readers; they don't want to challenge their readers; they want to produce exactly what their reader expects them to produce. I'm not like that.
Sarnath BanerjeeNarratives have the same power, I think. Some readers of my novels ask me, "Why do you understand me?". That's a huge pleasure of mine because it means that readers and I can make our narratives relative.
Haruki MurakamiI made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.
Seth GodinMost readers look at the photograph first. If you put it in the middle of the page, the reader will start by looking in the middle. Then her eye must go up to read the headline; this doesn't work, because people have a habit of scanning downwards. However, suppose a few readers do read the headline after seeing the photograph below it. After that, you require them to jump down past the photograph which they have already seen. Not bloody likely.
David OgilvyListen, people like Brian Bendis did great things for comic readers, great things for comic readers.
Avi AradThe Librarian considered matters for a while. Soโฆa dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarianโs opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.
Terry PratchettHistorically 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.
Tom BrevoortMy readers - and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.
Paulo CoelhoFor 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.
Jodi PicoultThank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.
Harlan EllisonAuthors frequently say things they are unaware of; only after they have gotten the reactions of their readers do they discover what they have said
Umberto EcoI think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.
Sarah ZettelGreenwich Village always had its share of mind readers, but there are many more these days, and they seem to have moved closer to the mainstream of life in the city. What was crazy 10 years ago is now respectable, even among the best-educated New Yorkers.
Aravind AdigaI report when science clashes with the Bible story and when it reinforces it. Then I let the readers chew on it. As followers of Jesus and students of the Bible, what we're looking for is the truth. We find it by grappling with the facts. And when the truth remains a mystery that our facts can't solve, we live with it. We hold loosely to our waffling knowledge and tightly to Jesus.
Stephen M. MillerOne 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.
John GrishamThe number one reason I write is to come to schools and see my readers. I would do it for free.
Frank MurphyMy 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.
Saladin AhmedAnyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.
Kurt VonnegutI'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters.
George R. R. MartinStudents 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.
Donalyn MillerReaders have actually changed the way I've done things, changed the course of my career even, about four or five times. Just from reader feedback.
Debbie MacomberI have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.
Toni MorrisonThrough my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
Bharati MukherjeeI cannot, will not, withhold from my young readers the harsh realities of human hunger and suffering and loss, but neither will I neglect to plant that stubborn seed of hope that has enabled our race to outlast wars and famines and the destruction of death.
Katherine PatersonMy favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories
Sarah Addison AllenI think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.
Rita DoveSpecial-interest publications should realize that if they are attracting enough advertising and readers to make a profit, the interest is not so special.
Fran LebowitzWherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel.
Michael MorpurgoEva 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 doorsโyou will not put it down.
Deanna RaybournDon'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.
Teresa Nielsen HaydenIn any event, it's not exactly a secret to regular readers what my views on the war are
Garry TrudeauA great writer created a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.
Cyril ConnollyItโs 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.
Saint AugustineAs the 2012 elections approach the finish line, the chatter among columnists and political reporters is about upcoming books that take readers inside the campaigns, cutting-edge efforts to micro-target voters on Internet social applications, the enormous money flowing through super-PACs, and extreme political polarization.
Juan WilliamsPerhaps I had better inform my Protestant readers that the famous Dogma of Papal Infallibility is by far the most modest pretension of the kind in existence. Compared with our infallible democracies, our infallible medical councils, our infallible astronomers, our infallible judges, and our infallible parliaments, the Pope is on his knees in the dust confessing his ignorance before the throne of God, asking only that as to certain historical matters on which he has clearly more sources of information open to him than anyone else his decision shall be taken as final.
George Bernard ShawMany, if not most, of the best and most lasting childrenโs books have multiple levels, some of which are not fully accessible to their most likely readersโฆat least, not on their first read-through at age eight or ten or fifteen.
Patricia C. WredeI have observed that vulgar readers almost always lose their veneration for the writings of the genius with whom they have had personal intercourse.
Egerton BrydgesEven now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.
Chetan BhagatTo me, the print business model is so simple, where readers pay a dollar for all the content within, and that supports the enterprise. The web model is just so much more complicated, and involves this third party of advertisers, and all these other sources of revenue that are sort of provisional, but haven't been proven yet.
Dave EggersA book is a book, but a movie is a movie. The more faithful you are, the more you'll come up with Harry Potter #1 and #2, which are like filmed books on tape. They're so petrified of turning off the readers that they make no concessions to the fact that they're trying to make a piece of cinema.
Alexander Payne