Readers And Writers Quotes

Authors do not need to offer us the answers to such weighty questions such as how to live and prepare us to accept death. The aim of a writer's is to frame worldly questions that allow all readers too independently and jointly explore life-altering questions in a way that satisfies the fabric of thought corresponding to our respective times. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Is it not a pity when some stylistic subtlety is lost without trace by the reader's inattention? ~ David Richards

Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves. ~ Lloyd Alexander

Tacitus did not write a most dangerous book. His readers made it so. ~ Christopher B. Krebs

Home is where you keep your books! ~ Avijeet Das

We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development - part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" - has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so - and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few - have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author. ~ James Shapiro

A writer feels happy when the words connect with the reader's heart. ~ Avijeet Das

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing
and reading
is a solitary business. And it's good to know I'm not alone. ~ Shannon Celebi

When members of the London Poetry Society asked Browning to interpret a particularly difficult passage of Sordello, he read it twice, frowned, then admitted, "When I wrote that, God and I knew what I meant, but now God alone knows."
Rather than risk sounding dense, readers, colleagues, and critics who can't figure out what a writer is trying to say but think it sounds intelligent will typically resort to calling such work "daring," "provocative," or "complex." An unholy alliance of writers and readers is at work here. ~ Ralph Keyes

The last chapter in 'Alice in Worcestershire' is called 'Writing the book'.
I started to write that 'Diary' chapter at the very beginning of the process and followed it through to the end... speaking to the reader.

My decision to do this was because I've often read autobiographies and wondered how the author felt and how it impacted them writing about painful memories that had been locked away in a deep forgotten place.
I wanted to know what was going in their 'present' life while they were writing; about the struggle with sharing their inner secrets and... I'm... inquisitive. (nosy)!

It took me over five years to finish 'Alice in Worcestershire' because sometimes, I was simply too drained to continue. Periodically, I updated the 'Diary' chapter and, thankfully, it's enthusiastically appreciated by readers. ~ Eskay Teel

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well. ~ Margaret Atwood

It's the whole cat and mouse game between the readers and writers that makes the web work. ~ Tim Berners-Lee

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know. ~ Alberto Manguel

I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence. ~ Harold Bloom

A good reader has the power to move the world. ~ Aman Jassal

The cats are asleep at the end of my bed and all around me, the thundery silence of L'Escarènere, caught at last in the rising flood of warm air, carrying the sand from the south. The Alps are folded above in the flickering light. And on the desk in the room beneath lies the writing which insists that the only escape is through the absolute destruction of everything you have ever known, loved, cared for, believed in, even the shell of yourself must be discarded with contempt; for freedom costs no less than everything, including your generosity, self-respect, integrity, tenderness - is that really what i wanted to say? It's what I have said. Worse still, I have pointed out the sheer creative joy of this ferocious destructiveness and the liberating wonder of violence. And these are dangerous messages for which I am no longer responsible. ~ Patricia Duncker

I am so happy that I made someone cry today - don't worry I'm a writer. It's when they make me cry that it's a problem. ~ Tina Smith

If you give a writer a line, they'll take a paragraph ... ~ Suzanne McKenna Link

What really makes for readability is not clarity but attitude: the attitude of your prose toward out elusive friend the Reader and the role you invent for that invented being in your invented world. ~ Stephen Koch

I like to hear from my readers, and I like to feel like I'm part of a bigger community of readers and writers. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Yet in one way or another all of us - readers and writers alike - are ultimately prisoners of the documents. And the chains are hard to see ~ Charles Tilly

Read different to think differently; world is already into rat race. ~ Aman Jassal

Something significant, magical, and
inspiring happens with each word you read in the pages of a book. You explore new lands, meet new people, feel new emotions, and are no longer the same person you were one word prior to reading it. ~ Martha Sweeney

She never claimed to be a writer, she simply described herself as a typist of stories waiting to come alive. ~ Margareth Stewart

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened. ~ Annie Dillard

A writer is nothing without a reader; a reader is nothing without a writer. ~ Anthony Liccione

A writer should be judged on how red they make their reader's eyes. ~ Luke Taylor

A word ( ... ) is never the destination, merely a signpost in its general direction; and whatever ( ... ) body that destination finally acquires owes quite as much to the reader as to the writer. ~ John Fowles

If you don't believe anything else, believe this: when I take you by your hand and begin to talk, my friend, I believe every word I say. ~ Stephen King

There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life. ~ Charlotte Bronte

The best gift you can give me is a book. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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

Reading, writing, and personal introspection will not protect us from hardship and suffering, but they might introduce us to critical thinking and expose us to what is good in humankind and beautiful in the world that we share with all of nature. Contemplative thought, especially that supplemented with reading literature and attempting to write our own replies to the echoing voices of writers whom preceded us provide us with the potentiality for change, the possibility of personal illumination that enables us to experience a heighted quality of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

An active engagement with written material through reflective thought gained by reading and writing leads to intellectual growth. A person whom fails to read and write will experience mental stagnation. Failure to cultivate ideas by exposing oneself to written material limits a person's resources to what they see and hear. Passively reviewing external stimuli might lull a person into believing that they are actively thinking and growing. The more external stimuli a person exposes themselves to, the less time that is available for pursing mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Reading is like magic--I think I've made my case. Without the gift of words, this world's a crazy place! ~ Denise Walter McConduit

The big thing that makes Dostoevsky invaluable for American readers and writers is that he appears to possess degrees of passion, conviction, and engagement with deep moral issues that we-here, today-cannot or do not permit ourselves. ~ David Foster Wallace

Some books send you around the world, while others send you around the bend. ~ Kevin Ansbro

The rules of grammar exist in large part to permit readers and writers to operate from a shared set of expectations. ~ Michael Crichton

Discovered Pages has released its first monthly magazine and it is being raved about!! We have author spotlights, great info for authors and readers, publishing info etc etc. Get your copy today on kindle for $1.99!!!! ~ Discovered Pages

Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I am really interested in the way we relate to time. In particular, the way readers and writers talk to each other. Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me. ~ Ruth Ozeki

In order to be heard, an author must have readers... ~ Rachel Heffington

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way. The reason for ensuring that that privileged arena is preserved is not that writers want the absolute freedom to say and do whatever they please. It is that we, all of us, readers and writers and citizens and generals and goodmen, need that little, unimportant-looking room. We do not need to call it sacred, but we do need to remember that it is necessary ~ Salman Rushdie

All of us are writers reading other people's writing, turning pages or clicking to the next screen with pleasure and admiration. All of us absorb other people's words, feeling like we have gotten to know the authors personally in our own ways, even if just a tiny bit. True, we may also harbor jealousy or resentment, disbelief or disappointment. We may wish we had written those words ourselves or berate ourselves for knowing we never could or sigh with relief that we didn't, but thank goodness someone else has. ~ Pamela Paul

Readers make writers and writers make readers ~ Carl McKever

Reviews are for readers, not writers. If I get a bad one, I shrug it off. If I get a good one, I don't believe it ~ William Meikle

Give me thirty minutes in a hostel, hotel or hospital and I can walk out with a novel idea. ~ D.W. Plato

Statistically, if you're reading this sentence, you're an oddball. The average American spends three minutes a day reading a book. At this moment, you and I are engaged in an essentially antiquated interaction. Welcome, fellow Neanderthal! ~ Dick Meyer

If any writer in this country has collected as fine and passionate a group of readers as I have, they're fortunate and lucky beyond anyone's imagination. It remains a shock to me that I've had a successful writing career. Not someone like me; Lord, there were too many forces working against me, too many dark currents pushing against me, but it somehow worked. Though I wish I'd written a lot more, been bolder with my talent, more forgiving of my weaknesses, I've managed to draw a magic audience into my circle. They come to my signings to tell me stories, their stories. The ones that have hurt them and made their nights long and their lives harder. ~ Pat Conroy

There's a very thin line that separates readers and writers. You make a leap over that line when there's a book you want to read and you can't find it and you have to write it yourself. ~ Alice Hoffman

There are but twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, yet I must have read a quadrillion words. ~ Kevin Ansbro

Readers and writers are united in their need for solitude, in their pursuit of substance in a time of ever-increasing evanescence: in their reach inward, via print, for a way out of loneliness. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Books gnaw at me from around the edges of my life, demanding more time and attention. I am always left hungry. ~ Pamela Paul

Reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer's alone. ~ Thomas C. Foster

The characters act for reasons that they can't control and, as readers, we have to believe in their motivations, their sense of choice and in the reality of their suffering, even though, deep down, we know it's all just puppetry on the part of the writer. ~ Johnny Rich

Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Do what you love, especially if your sharing the word ~ Ann Simpson

when you read once, you get the understanding ; when you read twice, you get the second understanding. Don't just read, read! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Reading about another era is like armchair time travel--without the baggage. ~ CJ Fosdick

Readers are often fans of Authors, but I, myself, am a fan of readers. They are the ones who breathe life into the pages that we give birth to, after all. ~ Janae Mitchell

If words come alive on the page, the writer succeeds in connecting to the reader. ~ Aman Jassal

I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do it alone. ~ John Cheever

Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa. ~ Peter Straub

I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment. ~ William Zinsser

A big 'thank you' to George Demetrion for helping readers see that the center does hold. A wise and winsome work. ~ Gabriel Fackre

Pretty much, the writer's in charge in theater. Of course you're in charge with the director, but no one can change your words. People can give you notes, but you don't have to take them. In Hollywood you take them and you cash your check and that's your job. It's very different. ~ David Lindsay-Abaire

Writing of a chance early meeting with Dylan Thomas in a London bar, Kay Boyle writes (1955, in the era of McCarthyism, 1947-1956):

Perhaps because he [Dylan Thomas was so often out of place among men, we take him now as symbol. Perhaps because we who write in America are in great difficulties now, we cherish Dylan Thomas as if he were our own ego, our own wild soul freed of the flesh. An American critic, writing of the American literary scene, points out that thinking Americans, in this period of our nation's development, are deeply troubled because "the demands for national security and for individual freedom" are in conflict. ~ Kay Boyle

I kind of have an interest in all history. And I suspect it comes from being Irish - we like stories, we like telling stories, which makes a lot of us lean towards being writers or actors or directors. ~ Colm Meaney

One of the things that put me off writing for a while was that piece of advice everybody gives new writers: 'Write what you know.' Nobody would ever want to read about my boring life! But I do know a lot of things about different societies' cultures and mythologies. The way people were and are. ~ Carol Berg

Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. "I will not Reason and Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable. ~ Brenda Ueland

Some writers and producers are currently writing a sitcom for me, so we'll see what happens there. I'm somewhat reluctant to talk about some of the upcoming projects that I'm working on; I've a lot of stuff on the go, including five pictures that I'm looking at producing. ~ Gil Gerard

I'd never really done comedy before 'Community,' so getting to work day in and day out with all these great people, directors, writers, and actors, I feel like I've learned a lot. ~ Gillian Jacobs

One of the greatest myths of addiction is that it's interesting. There is a slight glamour in the beginning, a feeling of doing something wrong, of indulging in a weird world populated by ghosts who used to be struggling musicians but don't make music anymore, or writers who never write. And then your whole life is getting high and being numb, and there's absolutely no reason to leave your bed except to get more money. Your life becomes a triangle of elemental needs: get money, get drugs, get home. ~ Jade Sharma

The beauty of my body is not measured by the size of the clothes it can fit into, but by the stories that it tells. I have a belly and hips that say, "We grew a child in here," and breasts that say, "We nourished life." My hands, with bitten nails and a writer's callus, say, "We create amazing things. ~ Sarah

After Bush was elected in 2004 - please note that I didn't say 're-elected' - and I was walking around in my befuzzed state of confusion and low-grade depression, I set out more or systematically to read writers who'd grappled with that fundamental question of what America is, why it is the way it is. ~ Ben Fountain

A writing day is like any other day. Except I live in my pajamas, I forget to eat, and I suddenly look up, wondering when day turned into night. ~ Christy Hall

I think there really is no other way to write a long, serious
novel. You work, shelve it for a while, work, shelve it again,
work some more, month after month, year after year, and then
one day you read the whole piece through and, so far as you
can see, there are no mistakes. (The minute it's published and
you read the printed book you see a thousand.) This tortuous
process is not necessary, I suspect, for the writing of a popular
novel in which the characters are not meant to have depth and complexity, where character A is consistently stingy and character
B is consistently openhearted and nobody is a mass of
contradictions, as are real human beings. But for a true novel
there is generally no substitute for slow, slow baking.
We've all heard the stories of Tolstoy's pains over Anna Karenina,
Jane Austen's over Emma, or even Dostoevsky's over Crime and Punishment, a novel he grieved at having to publish prematurely,though he had worked at it much longer than most popular-fiction writers work at their novels. ~ John Gardner

I went through a big Kurt Vonnegut phase. But the writers who made me decide at a very early age that this is probably something I wanted to do were Stephen King and Douglas Adams, when I was probably, like, ten years old. ~ D. B. Weiss

Hire great writers If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever; their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else's shoes. They know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. ~ Jason Fried

It requires writers to do two things that by their metabolism are impossible. They must relax, and they must have confidence. ~ William Zinsser

Every writer dreams about the day they can step into their fiction and wander its hallways. ~ Shannon L. Alder

You can't be a good writer in the States anymore because to be a good one you have to have a country where you can be poor and still eat, and still make your living standard secondary to your writing. Thoreau himself couldn't do that in the States today. ~ Nelson Algren

If I could fall in love with a girl, it'd be her. Those ifs are dangerous. You try them on in your head like dresses, so easy to slide in and out of. If I kissed girls, I'd kiss her. If we kissed, it'd go like this. At some point I dropped the if like a slip and just wore the feeling, nothing between it and my skin. When I kiss her. When it happens. All of it took place in my head, in silence, locked tight in skull bone and the frantic synaptic whispers between neurons, no clues popping out except the passive-aggressive haircut, the incriminating poem.
That's the problem with writers. Too much imagination.
The greater part of me knew it couldn't be real, but the hopeful part, which is more concentrated and condensed, rich in nine essential delusions, thought: It's not all in your head. ~ Leah Raeder

Ah, but sir,' said Lascelles, 'it is precisely by passing judgments upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does. ~ Susanna Clarke

The inspiration for my novels comes from the depths of a creative well, based on asking myself questions over and over. I try to write something different each time I sit down to write; I try to surprise the readers. ~ Nicholas Sparks

...in the middle of the field, Harry suddenly stopped and looked back. Mr. Chad was all alone in the creepy woods. He could take care of himself...couldn't he? Of course he could, he was a teacher. ~ Connie Kingrey Anderson

From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story. ~ Alberto Manguel

As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers
a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of college students aspire to the writer's trade and where bare hundreds actually break through. ~ Stephen King

The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

The Greeks were so committed to ideas as supernatural forces that they created an entire group of goddesses (not one but nine) to represent creative power; the opening lines of both The Iliad and The Odyssey begin with calls to them. These nine goddesses, or muses, were the recipients of prayers from writers, engineers, and musicians. Even the great minds of the time, like Socrates and Plato, built shrines and visited temples dedicated to their particular muse (or muses, for those who hedged their bets). Right now, under our very secular noses, we honor these beliefs in our language, as the etymology of words like museum ("place of the muses") and music ("art of the muses") come from the Greek heritage of ideas as superhuman forces. ~ Scott Berkun

It does seem, in other words, not only more difficult for a woman experimental writer to be accepted than for a woman writer (which corresponds to the male situation of experimental writer vs. writer), but also peculiarly more difficult for a woman experimental writer to be accepted than for a male experimental writer. She may, if young, get caught up in a "movement," like Djuna Barnes, like H.D., like Laura Riding, as someone's mistress, and then be forgotten, or if old, she maybe "admitted" into a group, under a label, but never quite as seriously considered as the men in that group. ~ Christine Brooke-Rose

[T]o read was precisely to enter another world, which was not the reader's own, and come back refreshed, ready to bear with equanimity the injustices and frustrations of this one. Reading was balm, amusement
not incitement. ~ Susan Sontag

One of the general patterns of good (i.e., striking and memorable) writing is the effect of repetition. If you use a certain element - a plot device, an image, a noticeable phrase - once, readers may or may not notice it consciously, but it doesn't disturb the flow of their reading. If you use that element twice, they won't notice it consciously - but they will notice it subconsciously, and it will add to the resonance of the writing or to their sense of depth and involvement (and if it's a plot device, it will heighten the dramatic tension). But if you use that element three times, everybody will notice it the third time you do it. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I don't think there's a less elitist thing on earth to do than to try and reach out and connect with another human being . . . And that's what the best writing does, that's what art does. It looks a reader in the eye, and it proceeds honestly with that reader, and nakedly. There is a compact there, a bond, a relationship, a union, a symbiosis . . . It's not about you. Whether you're a genius or an idiot savant. It's about the work. The work is more important than you. So it's not about back-claps and plaudits and "isn't that author smart." It's about, "this book really connected with me. And even though you, my friend, are very different from me, I'm lending it to you, because I think it will connect with you as well." Community. Across the eras. Between people who have never met, who will never meet, who are nonetheless bound in something together, in different ways. ~ Colin Fleming

When I write, I bring joy in my readers face
In my face, peace and complete happiness
But hardly I give any such reflection
During those times, I am in pain
A Sick person who is insane, mad and dead ~ Santosh Kalwar

Whatever else may be thought of the evidence from early Jewish and Gentile writers it does at least establish, for those who refuse the witness of Christian writings, the historical character of Jesus Himself. ~ F.F. Bruce

I didn't want to tell Mother I worked as a journalist. She thought I was a prostitute. Locking yourself in a room and inventing characters and conversations which do not exit is no way for a grown man to behave. ~ Sebastian Horsley

When the modern movement began, starting perhaps with the paintings of Manet and the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, what distinguished the modern movement was the enormous honesty that writers, painters and playwrights displayed about themselves. The bourgeois novel flinches from such notions. ~ J.G. Ballard

It's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, knowing what I know about the sleaze of the New York Custom House, and the honorable if bitter decency with which Melville did his job, I have come to regard literature's loss as the republic's gain. Great writers are a dime a dozen in New York. But an honest customs inspector in the Gilded Age? Unheard of. ~ Sarah Vowell

[...] identify influential writers and news sources (including those with strong biases) and monitor what they are saying. This can help you understand how groups talk about events and issues. ~ Rachel Hilary Brown