Quotes on Reader

I really am a believer that 99.99% of all the stories we need, not only as artists but as human beings, not only as writers but as readers, haven't been written yet. Certainly haven't been published yet.

'Drown' was always a hybrid book. It's connected stories - partially a story collection but partially a novel. I always wanted the reader to decide which genre they thought the book belonged to more - story, novel, neither, both.

Asymmetric balance creates greater reader interest. Pleasure derived from observing asymmetrical arrangements lies partly in overcoming resistances, which, consciously or not, the spectator adjusts in his own mind.

Journalism's ultimate purpose is to inform the reader, to bring him each day a letter from home and never to permit the serving of special interests.

No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball. The desire to play ball or to read must be planted. The last 25 years of research show that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and must successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader.

The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.

If you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.

I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.

Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.

I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him.

Designers provide ways into—and out of—the flood of words by breaking up text into pieces and offering shortcuts and alternate routes through masses of information. (...) Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design’s most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading.

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him.

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.

Good writing never soothes or comforts. It is no prescription, neither is it diversionary, although it can and should enchant while it explodes in the reader's face.