Reader Quotes
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Neither the writer nor the reader can save the world by themselves. Or escape it entirely.
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It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.
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The whole past and the whole world are alive in my heart, and I shall do my part to communicate their presence to my readers.
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My own literary interest is more about excavating the past, or sensing the past inside the present. This requires all kinds of exclusions and sleights of hand. There's an admittedly antiquarian flavor to it, even though there's enough of the present included to lull the reader.
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Perhaps it's worth saying again: One reader's discomfort should never stand in the way of another reader's survival.
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What I do with the story itself varies of course, but what I want to do is to present the world so that the reader can access it without tripping over the details.
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I think the reason novels are regarded to have so much more 'information' than films is that they outsource the scenic design and cinematography to the reader... This, for me, is a powerful argument for the value and potency of literature specifically. Movies don't demand as much from the player. Most people know this; at the end of the day you can be too beat to read but not yet too beat to watch television or listen to music.
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As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.
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Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.
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So it was doing all this research or going to the archives or doing all these interviews or traveling, and then trying as much as I can to delete all of that research in a later draft so that all the reader cares about is the characters.
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Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.
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Al Bernstein has seen cable television sports grow up. In 30 Years/30 Undeniable Truths he looks at his time in the industry through a prism that is unique to him. This book gives the reader an insight into the sometimes absurd world of television sports. There is a 31st undeniable truth: Al Bernstein is a truly funny man.
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I am obliged to deal with hundreds of men and to make them live without killing the reader.
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Would you buy a book proudly stating on the cover that its reader is a dummy? Or would you think "of course it's ironic"?
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One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero.
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She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.
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This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.
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I had to decide if I wanted to be known as a writer or a reader. I chose writer.
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I've always liked language and been a big reader. I always loved books as objects. My favorite time of year as a child was September when we'd go buy all kinds of notebooks and pens and markers for school. I think I wanted to be a writer just so I'd be able to fill up all those pages.
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It's the writer's job to disarm the reader of his logic, to just make the reader feel.
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The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.
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The mystic cannot wholly do without symbol and image, inadequate to his vision though they must always be: for his experience must be expressed if it is to be communicated, and its actuality is inexpressible except in some hint or parallel which will stimulate the dormant intuition of the reader.
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I would encourage you as a screenwriter to trust your story and don't make notes for the actors or don't make notes for the reader.
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The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
