Reader Quotes

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.

The prime goal of an author is the same as a musician, which is to emotionally connect with the reader in some way or another.

English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind.

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.

I'm an avid biography reader.

I am a slow reader. I always loved words, which is a strange thing given that I couldn't actually read them.

For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader.

Who is the ideal reader? God only knows.

I'm the slowest reader in the world, because I perform it all in my head.

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea - something I've figured out about her that's news and that's worth a reader's time.

It's always hard when you're playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There's a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone's idea of that.

But we talk about issues, we talk about people, we talk about personalities. George is a very good reader of people, and he's very perceptive about people, and you know, that's fine.

I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little bit and to break up the monotony of the plain American cadence.

It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.

But it has also enabled me to find my feet as a lecturer and a reader of my own plays to audiences who like to hear them; and that experience of immediate appreciation gives greater pleasure and more stimulus towards further activity than even the most laudatory of reviews.

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that.

Hypocrite reader my fellow my brother!

I've always been interested in gadgets and technology and I've always been a reader.

I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.

I do insist on making what I hope is sense so there's always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow.

From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.

The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.

I don't believe in writing anything that I don't know about or haven't researched about personally. I like to transport the reader to places, and in order to do that I have to do the research.

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

I was just as voracious a writer as I was a reader.

I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry.