Reader Quotes - Page 4

• My very identities as a reader and a writer began at the Walt Whitman branch library.

  Paula Spencer

  Library, Identity, Branches

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• They'll remember you if you're the best reader in class-or if you throw up at lunch.

  Cynthia Lewis

  Class, Lunch, Remember You

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• Freedom of speech trumps political correctness. I would say our magazine would publish an anti-Semitic or Holocaust denying cartoon if it meant Jews around the world were rioting because of it and burning embassies because of a cartoon. We would want to show our readers what all the fuss was about.

  Ezra Levant

  Holocaust, Political, Freedom Of Speech

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• Second, the reason to embrace and celebrate these novels as the countercultural event that they are is due largely to the subliminal messages delivered by Harry and friends in their stolen wheelbarrows. Readers walk away, maybe a little softer on the occult than they were, but with story-embedded messages: the importance of a pure soul; love's power even over death; about sacrifice and loyalty; a host of images and shadows about Christ and how essential 'right belief' is for personal transformation and victory over internal and external evils.

  John Granger

  Love, Loyalty, Sacrifice

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• There are a lot of snobs out there who disregard these books (romance novels), but they fulfil a need. I am happy and fulfilled in what I am doing and readers love them. And why not? They are harmless and they are fun.

  Sara Craven

  Fun, Book, Romance

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• The reader reads aloud, with a sing-song up … then down … then down again cadence. My mood shifts from merely reluctant to derisive. It’s a tired reading style. I’m sick of it. It attaches more importance to the words than the words themselves—as they’ve been arranged—could possibly sustain, and it gives poets and poetry a bad name.

  Gabrielle Hamilton

  Song, Reading, Tired

  Gabrielle Hamilton (2011). “Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef”, p.104, Random House

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• Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word "myth" only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.

  Adam Kirsch

  Believe, Reality, Stories

  "The Mystic Word" by Adam Kirsch, www.newyorker.com. October 9, 2006.

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• Works of art are not so much finished as abandoned. Perhaps poems can be perfect. A short-short story might even be perfectible, as effective and enjoyable for one reader as the next. But novels and other book-length narratives are great rambling things that always contain some flaws. For works of any length, there comes a point when your continued tinkering won't improve the whole, but will just trade one set of problems for another.

  Bruce Holland Rogers

  Art, Book, Perfect

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• Terry Farish seems to breathe the reader into the emotional spaces of war, exile, and refugee life. The Good Braider is a delicate stunning exploration of its young protagonist's life and heart.

  Uma Krishnaswami

  War, Heart, Emotional

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• As a reader I feel included a lot in Julie Carr’s hard and beautiful book. I can pretty much hear its author speak—a whispering that enables us into its world . . . a masterfully sutured journey, painfully useful. Sarah—Of Fragments and Lines is a book I know I will return to. And urge it on my friends who have lives too and write in them.

  Eileen Myles

  Beautiful, Book, Writing

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• Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive, for the writer.

  Rachel Kushner

  Book, Writing, Numbers

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• If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.

  Adrian Frutiger

  Beautiful, Lunch, Design

  "Design for knife: can cutlery help people with disabilities?" by Justin McGuirk, www.theguardian.com. June 18, 2012.

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• The clever reader who is capable or reading between these lines what does not stand written in them but is nevertheless implied will be able to form some conception.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Clever, Reading, Reality

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• If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book.

  Ayn Rand

  Book, Writing, Giving

  Ayn Rand (2000). “The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers”, p.22, Penguin

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• Sometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.

  John M. Ford

  Reality, Sometimes, Decipher

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• Readers usually ignore the typographic interface, gliding comfortably along literacy's habitual groove. Sometimes, however, the interface should be allowed to fail. By making itself evident, typography can illuminate the construction and identity of a page, screen, place or product.

  Ellen Lupton

  Design, Identity, Gliding

  Ellen Lupton (2014). “Thinking with Type”, p.99, Chronicle Books

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• Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you're writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader's imagination will reject it.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Reality, Imagination

  "Worldwide Laws of Life : 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles". Book by John Templeton, 1998.

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• I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel sorry for my psychopaths, because I do.

  Ruth Rendell

  Sorry, Thinking, Trying

  FaceBook post by Ruth Rendell from Aug 19, 2011

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• I do not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.

  Anne Rice

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  "'Fifty Shades of Grey' shines light on erotic fan fiction" By Stephanie Goldberg, www.cnn.com. April 6, 2012.

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• Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. My responsibility is to the reader. The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader.

  Irving Penn

  Responsibility, Kansas, Interesting

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• The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Long, Secret

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• Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews

  John Hagee

  Catholic, Church, Records

  John Hagee (2006). “Jerusalem Countdown”, p.114, Charisma Media

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• It is apparent at first glance that in The Double there is more creative talent and depth of thought than in Poor Folk. But meanwhile the consensus of St. Petersburg readers is that this novel is intolerably long-winded and therefore terribly boring.

  Vissarion Belinsky

  Long, Creative, Depth

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• The early development of speed reading can be traced to the beginning of the (20th) century, when the publication explosion swamped readers with more than they could possibly handle at normal reading rates.

  Tony Buzan

  Reading, Development, Normal

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• When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.

  Tracy Kidder

  Believe, Stories

  Tracy Kidder, Richard Todd (2013). “Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction”, p.81, Random House

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