Quotes About Readers

pages of books--he steps inside magical stories, inviting readers to come along for the ride. Witty verse and verse and fantastical

General sporting magazines, scrabbling madly for dollars in a declining market, had become tools of market research, which again and again told editors to give readers more of what they already had.

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.

But in the wake of 'Bullet,' all the guys wanted to know was, 'How's it doing? How's it selling?' How to tell them I didn't give a flying fuck how it was doing in the marketplace, that what I cared about was how it was doing in the reader's heart?

It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.

Thanks to you guys and girls who read my stuff, too. May you have long days and pleasant nights.

To those readers who feel that I didn't know any better, I assert that I did ... but the temptation was simply too great to resist.

Régis Jauffret got it right when he said that he was disgusted by writers who think of their readers.

The same skills needed for writing are needed or reading. Writers fail readers, but it also happens the other way around and readers fail writers when all they ask of them is confirmation that the world is how they see it…

course, innovation writ large is related to anything and everything, so the phenomena and the literatures I will discuss here are only those hanging closest on the intellectual tree. My goal is to enable interested readers to migrate to further branches as they wish, assisted by the provision of a few important references. With respect to phenomena, I will first point out the relationship of user innovation to

I've got at least four or five readers. God has not abandoned me. Why the Lord of hosts has let the ranks become so thin, who can say?

no matter what any poet did, the poems would constitute screens on which readers could project their own desperate belief in the possibility of poetic experience, whatever that might be, or afford them the opportunity to mourn its impossibility.

Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?

You get a little picture that reflects the whole. You can get readers interested in the life of one guy, and he can reflect the whole life around him. And it's a better picture than the politicians give you.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written.

The futuristic city on 'Legends Walking's cover rejects any connection with the contemporary setting of 'Changer.' It was as if every effort was made to keep readers of 'Changer' from finding this stand-alone sequel.

At first blush, it seems odd that loser lit books are rejected initially, then go on to be fiercely loved by legions of readers. This apparent contradiction might be due to the fact that if they didn't screw up their lives, most losers would be the kind of power-elite, Type A go-getters whom readers love to hate.

The decision came from the publisher. It certainly was cleared by Chicago. And then they come out with these fine sounding words about relation to readers and their obligation. It has nothing to do with that.

Children's books are often seen as the poor relation of literature. But children are just as demanding as adult readers, if not more so. I should know. I'm a children's writer myself.

You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.

I don't think too much about the audience when I'm writing... I'm aware that 'Holes' was read by kids as young as 8, up to adults.

What excites me, what attracts me, what gets me up in the morning is telling the next story and getting it out in front of readers and hoping they'll love it too.

shopping baskets, or tramps, but never readers. A tramp would proudly occupy a whole bench. No one cared to share the bench with a tramp, so unlike the rest of the world he could stretch at full length.

Y'know, I keep track of our subscribers—over a hundred and fifty thousand of them. We've been getting a lot of changes of address these last few years—to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, plus Hanford, Washington." Riley shot back, "Which means?" "Most of our readers are scientists and engineers. They're going places I never heard of, lots of 'em." For