Quotes About Readers

The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.

Mathematicians among my readers do not need to be informed that . . . is the algebraical sign representing a blend of wheeze, croak, and hiccough.

But those who read thrillers are an impatient race. They chafe at scenic rhapsodies and want to get on to the rough stuff.

When Emerson's poem BRAHMA appeared in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY in 1857, most the readers were bewildered. Emerson chuckled. "Tell them," he said, "to say 'Jehovah' instead of 'Brahma' and they will not feel any perplexity.

To have attracted readers is the most magical part of my writing life. I was not expecting you to show up when I wrote my first books. It took me by surprise. It filled me with gratitude. It still does.

This room had long served as a retreat from the disharmony and sadness of the first floor, and it was here I had fallen in love with these books and authors in a way that only lifelong readers know and understand. A good movie had never once affected me in the same life-changing way a good book could. Books had the power to alter my view of the world forever. A good movie could change my perceptions for a day.

No wonder that, to a writer—to readers, to so many beset people now—solitude suggests not loneliness, but serenity, that kissing cousin of sanity.

Faction is a dangerous thing—presenting readers, viewers, and listeners with a fictitious account and making them think that it is true.

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

I kind of just write what I like to write. I'm thankful that readers of different ages seem to connect to my stories. I don't consciously think about age demographics when I'm working on my comics.

But some words to men and women, boys and girls alike: The quality of the work must merit the readers' time and money. Do it for yourself, but make yourself a member of your own audience. There is no other way to evaluate your own progress.

Lord! haven't I seen you with the greatest authors in your hands, and don't I know how ready your attention is to wander when it's a book that asks for it, instead of a person?

the chapters on whaling in MOBY DICK can be omitted by all but the most punishment-loving readers.

the second book's for readers, he said. But you can't know when they'll come, if they do. It's the book for telling: no code for that one. But—he counted one again and had my close attention—you can still use it to tell secrets and send messages. Even so. You could say them right out, but you can hide them in the words too, in their letters, in the ordering on lines, the arrangements and rhythms.

Ce sont les lecteurs qui rendent les personnages éternels.

Many if not most of the interpretive mistakes in biblicism, I think, come in the form of texts having perlocutionary effects on biblicist readers that were not intended by the biblical authors or perhaps the God who inspired them.

I do implore my readers, therefore, not to be more clever than their author, and see portraits where, quite honestly, none are intended. C.B.

Sam's constant deference and humility make many modern readers uncomfortable with its connotations of class difference, and in Peter Jackson's films this differential between Frodo and Sam is softened a bit.

But what happens if and when writers begin to outnumber readers? What happens when writing becomes more attractive than reading? Will we become -- or are we already -- a nation of performers with no audience?

We -- editors, writers, teachers, publishers -- need to do whatever we can to enliven readers, to help create communities for them if we want to continue to have readers at all. Our independent bookstores are the front lines, and many booksellers are fighting the good fight. Here, books stimulate conversation. Conversation stimulates a sense of community. Listening happens. Thinking. The exchange of thoughts.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

The fate of books depends on the understanding of those who read them.

What is reasonable for you to expect is that no matter how idiosyncratic or "different" your own, particular voice may be, there will be a number of readers who will like it. Who will be drawn to the personality on the page.

By being yourself on the page, you'll more than likely attract more readers because of your individuality than you would by hiding your personality behind a neutral style.