Fatal Non Readers Quotes

Rouge, also, had a peculiar function as caste-mark. It was applied with a heavy hand and in a circular pattern. It was worn most lavishly on the day of a woman's debut, when she was obliged to simulate the flush of the contrived orgasm bestowed by royal favour. ~ Hilary Mantel

All fathers who don't read like Guy Fieri. ~ Lauren Leto

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader. ~ Terry Eagleton

I'm a compulsive reader of fiction. I fell in love with novels when I was a teenager. My wife Marilyn and I ... our initial friendship began because we are both readers. I've gone to sleep almost every night of my life after having read in a novel for 30 or 40 minutes. I'm a great reader of fiction and much less so of non-fiction. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

Pulitzer's Gold is a goldmine of inspiration for both journalists and non-journalists. Those in the newspaper business, who now find themselves obsessing about staff cutbacks and circulation declines, should embrace this book as a reminder of the highest ideals, and the absolute thrills, to be found in their profession. As for regular readers, Pulitzer's Gold offers marvelous storytelling, real-life adventures, and absolute proof that journalism can change our world for the better. ~ Jeffrey Zaslow

It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips – biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They get the munchies.) ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

All use of speech implies convention and therefore at least duality of minds. The problem of communication through language may in this light be seen as the search for the means supplied by the conventions (or code) to transmit a message from one mind to another. (This definition is as applicable to "literary" communication as it is to "non-literary.") ...Is the code exactly the same for transmitter and receiver? Indeed, can it ever be? It hardly seems likely, since in the strict sense no two people have ever acquired exactly the same code. Consequently, the correspondence between the writer's understand of his writing (I do not, of course, mean merely a conscious or reflective understanding) and the reader's understanding of it will be at least approximate. Another variable is the mental, emotional, and cultural constitution of the being who used the code to transmit a message, and of the being who decodes it. To what extent are they capable of understanding each other? To what extent will they be willing to cooperate in dealing with the inevitable problems in communication? To what extent will anticipated or actual reaction ("feedback") from the receiver affect the framing of the message? Perhaps more important than any of these variables, there is the as yet unresolved question of the very nature of language, and therefore of communication through language. What do agreed upon symbols stand for? Is it conceivable that they correspond to something objectively identifiable? ~ Robert Ellrich

Digital-Original publishing embraces the non-conventional and genre-busting story. It allows me to share good stories with readers who will enjoy them, and at a reasonable price. ~ Michael A. Stackpole

Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark - readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge. ~ A.S. Byatt

Even non-commercial media rely on transferring cost to users through licence fees, donations from listeners, viewers, or readers, or grants from companies and foundations that have wrestled their funds from the public in some form of earlier commercial activity. ~ Robert G. Picard

Even what are considered the accomplishments of diversity are admissions of its failure. All across America, public organizations such as fire departments and police forces congratulate themselves when they manage to hire more than a token number of blacks or Hispanics. They promise that this will greatly improve service.
And yet, is this not an admission of how difficult the multi-racial enterprise really is? If all across America it has been shown that whites cannot provide effective police protection for blacks or Hispanics, it only proves that diversity is an insoluble problem. If blacks want black officers and Hispanics want Hispanic officers, they are certainly not expressing support for diversity. A mixed-race force - touted as an example of the benefits of diversity - becomes necessary only because of the tensions that arise between officers of one race and citizens of another. The diversity we celebrate is necessary only because of the intractable problems of diversity.
Likewise, if Hispanic judges and prosecutors must be recruited for the justice system, does this mean whites cannot dispense dispassionate justice? If non-white teachers are necessary role models for non-white children, does this mean inspiration cannot cross racial lines? If newspapers must hire non-white reporters in order to satisfy non-white readers, does this mean whites cannot write acceptable news for non-whites? If blacks demand black newscasters and weathermen on television, does it ~ Jared Taylor

Some junk novels were all about airports. Some junk novels were even called things like Airport. Why, then you might ask, was there no airport called Junk Novel? …Junk novels have been around for at least as long as non-junk novels, and airports haven't been around for very long at all. But they both really took off at the same time. Readers of junk novels and people in airports wanted the same thing: escape, and quick transfer from one junk novel to another junk novel and from one airport to another airport. ~ Martin Amis

One of the most frequent responses I get from non-Christian readers is: 'I'm not sure I agree with all this, but I must say this is the first book I've read by a Christian that didn't treat me like I was an idiot.' ~ Timothy Keller

I recommend readers to be adventurous and to try things they've never heard of or considered reading before. Get out of the comfort zone and discover something new and exciting. If you'd never be caught dead in the mystery section go and read some George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly or many others. If you only read thrillers get deep into the literary fiction aisle and let yourself be seduced. If you only read non-fiction pick up a Ian McDonald novel or a Joyce Carol Oates novel. If you only read comic books, get acquainted with the great Charles Dickens or a certain Monsieur Dumas. Pick up something at random and read a page. Feel the texture of the language, the architecture of the imagery, the perfume of the style… There's so much beauty, intelligence and excitement to be had between the pages of the books waiting for you at your local bookstore the only thing you need to bring is an open mind and a sense of adventure. Disregard all prejudices, all pre-conceived notions and all the rubbish some people try to make you think. Think for yourself. Regarding books or anything in life. Think for yourself. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I don't write non-fiction because I get bored. Some of my writing is autobiographical, but not the way readers imagine. I use my memory of settings, events and people. I weave history into my stories, but my narratives are made up. ~ Sefi Atta

My new favorite quote is, Feed kids Cokes and french fries and you get an obesity crisis. Feed them mental junk food and you get non-readers and poor thinkers. ~ Joy Hakim

For every fatal shooting, there are about 3 non-fatal shootings. Folks, this is unacceptable in America. ~ George W. Bush

I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast? ~ Douglas Hofstadter

It is my joy to share with present and future generations these stories so full of humor, warmth, and adventure – and so rich in the rural culture of the early 1900's. ~ Linda Boynton Pedersen

And against whom is this censorship directed? By way of answer, think back to the big subcultural debates of 2011 – debates about how gritty fantasy isn't really fantasy; how epic fantasy written from the female gaze isn't really fantasy; how women should stop complaining about sexism in comics because clearly, they just hate comics; how trying to incorporate non-Eurocentric settings into fantasy is just political correctness gone wrong and a betrayal of the genre's origins; how anyone who finds the portrayal of women and relationships in YA novels problematic really just wants to hate on the choices of female authors and readers; how aspiring authors and bloggers shouldn't post negative reviews online, because it could hurt their careers; how there's no homophobia in publishing houses, so the lack of gay YA protagonists can only be because the manuscripts that feature them are bad; how there's nothing problematic about lots of pretty dead girls on YA covers; how there's nothing wrong with SF getting called 'dystopia' when it's marketed to teenage girls, because girls don't read SF. Most these issues relate to fear of change in the genre, and to deeper social problems like sexism and racism; but they are also about criticism, and the freedom of readers, bloggers and authors alike to critique SFF and YA novels without a backlash that declares them heretical for doing so.


It's not enough any more to tiptoe around the issues that matter, refusing to name the wor ~ Foz Meadows

Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom. ~ Tom Bissell

Still rarer is the man who thinks habitually, who applies reason, rather than habit pattern, to all his activity. Unless he masques himself, his is a dangerous life; he is regarded as queer, untrustworthy, subversive of public morals; he is a pink monkey among brown monkeys
a fatal mistake. Unless the pink monkey can dye himself brown before he is caught.
The brown monkey's instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.
Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption, and non-fact. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Excuse me?"
The librarian looked up again.
"I need help now. I need to print this article and . . . do you have any books about dukes?"
The librarian's eyes went wide and she rubbed her hands together with glee. "We have a fantastic romance section," she said. "Do you need recommendations? How do you like your dukes? Grumpy? Tortured? Alpha, beta, or alpha in the streets, beta in the sheets?"
"Actually, I meant nonfiction," Portia said glumly.
The librarian sighed. "Aye. Just a warning, love - the non-fic dukes are not nearly as fun. ~ Alyssa Cole

That is as true for fiction or non-fiction. The writer has to really know their subject. It is really important to remember that the readers are a lot smarter than the writer. Also, good writing has to do with rewriting. You will never get it right the first time. So you rewrite and rewrite again until you get it right. Until you, and the reader, will be able to visualize what you're writing about. ~ Michael Scott

Practical advice. - People who read much must always keep it in mind that life is one thing, literature another. Not that authors invariably lie. I declare that there are writers who rarely and most reluctantly lie. But one must know how to read, and that isn't easy. Out of a hundred bookreaders ninety-nine have no idea what they are reading about. It is a common belief, for example, that any writer who sings of suffering must be ready at all times to open his arms to the weary and heavy-laden. This is what his readers feel when they read his books. Then when they approach him with their woes, and find that he runs away without looking back at them, they are filled with indignation and talk of the discrepancy between word and deed. Whereas the fact is, the singer has more than enough woes of his own, and he sings them because he can't get rid of them. L'uccello canta nella gabbia, non di gioia ma di rabbia, says the Italian proverb: "The bird sings in the cage, not from joy but from rage." It is impossible to love sufferers, particularly hopeless sufferers, and whoever says otherwise is a deliberate liar. "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But you remember what the Jews said about Him: "He speaks as one having authority!" And if Jesus had been unable, or had not possessed the right, to answer this skeptical taunt, He would have had to renounce His words. We common mortals have neither divine powers nor divine rights, we can only l ~ Lev Shestov

Not to any really influential effect, but certainly there have been comments that have surprised me. It's surprising sometimes to get particular perspectives on your work, and it's enlightening sometimes to know that non-writers and readers out there have certain assumptions about everything that I both want to keep in mind and want to forget about why I write, and about the connection between me as a private person and the stuff that I think about on the page. ~ Chang-rae Lee

Journalists in newspapers and in many magazines are not permitted to be subjective and tell their readers what they think. Journalists have got to follow a very strict formulaic line, and here we come, these non-fiction writers, these former journalists who are using all the techniques that journalists are pretty much not allowed to use. ~ Lee Gutkind

From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing us from succumbing to lethargy, self-absorption, resignation. Nothing has sown so much disquiet, so disturbed our imagination and our desires as the life of lies we add, thanks to literature, to the one we have, so we can be protagonists in the great adventures, the great passions real life will never give us. The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality. Sorcery, when literature offers us the hope of having what we do not have, being what we are not, acceding to that impossible existence where like pagan gods we feel mortal and eternal at the same time, that introduces into our spirits non-conformity and rebellion, which are behind all the heroic deeds that have contributed to the reduction of violence in human relationships. Reducing violence, not ending it. Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa

Because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they had both made the fatal error of coming hazily to regard time as non-existent. One year was like another year. Eventually everything would happen. ~ Paul Bowles

Melanin is the black pigment which permits skins to appear other than white (black, brown, red and yellow). Melanin pigment coloration is the norm for the hue-man family. If there are non-white readers who disagree with this presentation of white rejection of the white-skinned self, may I refer you to the literature on the currently developing sun-tanning parlors. ~ Frances Cress Welsing

Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

In spite of the fundamental importance of economic facts in determining politics and beliefs of an age or nation, I do not think that non-economic factors can be neglected without risks of error which may be fatal in practice. ~ Bertrand Russell

Our job is not to amuse our readers. Our mission is to stir them, inform and inflame them. Our task is to continually hold up our government and our leaders to clear-eyed analysis, unaffected by professional spinmeisters and agenda-pushers. In these times, when those of us who are members of the 'reality-based community' are under relentless attack from both the right and the left, we must encourage, and our work must reflect, independent and non-ideological thinking. ~ Tony Auth

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
In the past most people never got a chance of fully satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but once a year, feasts were "solemn and rare," there were few readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where the performances though frequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment - from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distractions now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema. In "Brave New World" non-stop distractions of ~ Aldous Huxley

You will never find a faery at a science fair. Why? Because science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat logical, well-explained packages. The fey are magical, capricious, illogical and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of faeries, so naturally we do not exist. That type of non-belief is fatal to faeries. ~ Julie Kagawa

I found, when circulating chapters from this book, that some readers feel I am too hard on heterosexuality. I do not mean to be coming out against it. I simply do not see why the nation has to have an official sexuality, especially one that authorizes the norm of a violent gentility; that narrows the field of legitimate political action; that supports the amputation of personal complexity into categories of simple identity; that uses cruel and mundane strategies both to promote shame for non-normative populations and to deny them state, federal, and juridical supports because they are deemed morally incompetent to their own citizenship. This is the heterosexuality I repudiate. ~ Lauren Berlant

I don't believe there are readers and non-readers; I believe there are those who've found the right books and those who haven't--yet! ~ C.C. Payne

….unable to find a title for her last published novel, she wrote six lines which included her eventual title The Birds Fall Down. These lines were attributed to Conway Power (the name she generally appended to her poetry, even in her private notebooks), from a non-existent poem called 'Guide to a Disturbed Planet.' When the novel was published she had fun deflecting the enquiries of readers who wanted to know how to find the works of Conway Power. One was told a long story: Conway Power was a landowner in a remote area who had written thousands of poems and destroyed most of them. He had left some of them with her, given his property to a nephew, and gone abroad. 'If I can trace the book (if there is a book) I'll let you know. ~ Victoria Glendinning

One particular debate that I have seen play out again and again is whether trans people who have more traditional gender expressions or who "pass" more should be the ones who are represented. A recent advocacy guide focused on advocating around trans health care access produced by the largest trans advocacy organization in the US instructs readers that advocacy will be more successful if the message is delivered by people who pass as non-trans men and women. ~ Dean Spade

There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo's rapier or Lucrezia's poison vial. There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn't care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowh ~ Raymond Chandler

I have heard from many readers since 'The Girl in the Blue Beret' came out. The story of my airline pilot, former B-17 bomber pilot Marshall Stone, on his search to find the people who helped him during World War II has struck a chord. ~ Bobbie Ann Mason

Hi, my name is Tess Embers.
A lot of thoughts are probably running through your mind right now. Who does this person think she is? Doesn't she know that you should never begin a story with a boring phrase like,'Hi, my name is...'? Doesn't she know to use a hook at the beginning to draw readers in instead of pushing them away?
Well, sorry, but I'm just a teenage girl and I don't necessarily want everyone to know everything about my life. Maybe I don't want to hook people. ~ Embee

I approach stories as a private educational enterprise: I want to learn about something. I teach myself through research, reporting, and thinking, and then, when I feel like I know the story, I tell it to readers. ~ Susan Orlean

I suspect that any worthwhile exploration of these deep questions about living requires going beyond abstract discussions to the vivid presentation of possibilities. If readers are to be prompted to serious examination of their lives, anatomy isn't enough. We have to be stimulated to imagine, in some detail, what it would be like to live in particular ways. ~ Philip Kitcher

Haiku are meant to evoke an emotional response from the reader ... to light the spark that triggers creative rumination ... They act as literary manifestations ... visions of nature's seasonal modulations ... They're emotionally tinged words, barely perceptible sensory flickers ... literary etchings of lucid visions transposed into the minds of its readers ... They're meant to act as sensory catalysts ... like the passing of a penciled baton laid out upon a piece of paper that a reader might grasp for in their mind's eye ... all of which prompts the reader to continue exploring the sensory experience elicited from the writers pen ... This is how the literary sketching of poets are intended to function ... as creative muses with which readers can draw from and viscerally apply to their own artistic idioms ... from that lucid space within their heads ... where their minds eye can spark their own creative visions"

Bukusai Ashagawa ~ Bukusai Ashagawa

You do not know, and the readers cannot tell you, what they might like until they have it. It is one of those things that particularly if you want to be the next wave, well the next wave is not already on the bestseller lists. The next wave is in somebody's head. ~ Stephanie Laurens

To go straight to the deepest depth, I went for Hegel; what unclear thoughtless flow of words I was to find there! My unlucky star led me from Hegel to Schopenhauer ... Even in Kant there were many things that I could grasp so little that given his general acuity of mind I almost suspected that he was pulling the reader's leg or was even an imposter. ~ Ludwig Boltzmann

You have the greatest passion for your book so you need to show that passion and create an email list and different ways to connect with your readers. ~ W. Terry Whalin

There is a whole generation of romance readers and writers who suffer from what I like to think of as 'Thorn Birds' Fever. ~ Sarah MacLean