Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If there is any secret to my success, I think it's that my characters are very real to me. I feel everything they feel, and therefore I think my readers care about them.
I wanted to be a teacher, but I was a lousy student, one of the slowest readers. It was a tremendous struggle. But I'm lucky I had some teachers who saw something in me.
For readers of color, and especially black readers, black girls, I just want them to feel seen. And not just seen - I want them to feel epic and know that they are epic.
I used to be married to a woman who pursued every spiritual trend with tremendous passion and dragged me along. I don't believe in anything. I'd seen mediums and readers.
Readers in general are not fond of dialect, and I don't blame them. I've read books myself that I've had to put down because sounding out every speech gave me a headache.
In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
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!
I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.
Training readers to expect a voice or subject matter from me would interfere with the reinvention I crave. At the same time, I feel almost too able to disappear at times.
I love smart commercial fiction. Susan Isaacs, for example and the readers who interest me are, in the preponderance, women. I am one of them; I like the books they like.
I think there are readers out there and I don't think the book is dead. And more importantly I don't think readers have to choose between literary and commercial fiction.
I'd like for the young people, and older ones, too, who don't count themselves as readers, to know the joy of reading and what it does to enrich your life in so many ways.
Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as the most robust literary culture in the world.
A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.
All writers know how important a good title is. It's the first thing readers see, along with a knock-your-socks-off cover - a seductive 'come hither' for the story within.
Girls are the best readers in the world. Reading is really a way of kind of escaping so deeply into yourself and pursuing your own thoughts within the construct of a story.
Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers.
Some readers tell me, 'We always treated our maid like she was a member of the family.' You know, that's interesting, but I wonder what your maid's perspective was on that.
I wanted readers to be genuinely unsure as to whether she's telling the truth or lying. It meant making her partly sympathetic, and partly unsympathetic, which wasn't easy.
There's not much about me that readers don't know because I am equal parts open and boring. If there is one thing readers do know about me, it's that I am very un-domestic.
It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience).
With the '39 Clues,' we were making history jump out of the page for the readers, so they don't know they're learning. The kids can't put the books down - it's so exciting.
I think it is important for readers to know that it is possible to bring intellectualism and idealism to the White House and still be political enough to advance an agenda.
I wouldn't say the world is my parish, but my readers are my parish. And especially the readers that write to me. They're my parish. And it's a responsibility that I enjoy.
I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.
If you look at the heritage of the best advertising, you can make stuff that is great for both readers and advertisers. I don't think Don Draper would have loved banner ads.
If I'm doing something in fashion, I will try to respect the 'laws' of the business, but I will try to keep my integrity and my respect for the designers and for my readers.
I trust, that your readers will not construe my words to mean, that I would not have gone to a 3 o'clock in the morning session, for the sake of defeating the Nebraska bill.
You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.
It's been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West!
I don't like the idea of a book being a test or being used for a test. The way - in my opinion - to make good readers is to let kids choose their own books and not test them.
I said in my acceptance speech that I hope that readers remember this not as the year I won the Booker, but the year that there were six extraordinary books on the shortlist.
Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.
Librarians and romance writers accomplish one mission better than anyone, including English teachers: we create readers for life - and what could be more fulfilling than that?
'The Truth About Lorin Jones' will undoubtedly shock and offend as many readers as it will amuse, since it dares to make fun of feminism - of its manners, if not its politics.
I started my career so early and developed in print for better or for worse, so I think there's a sense some of my earliest readers are kind of copilots on this voyage with me.
'The Good Soldier' is an odd and maybe even unique book. That it is a masterpiece, almost a perfect novel, comes as a repeated surprise even to readers who have read it before.
When I write, I tend to be quite cut off from the world. At that point of time, I'm not thinking about editors, publishers or readers. I write the story the way it comes to me.
I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable.
Gravity must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this Agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers.
Familiar life, tending to sordidness, had been succeeded by remote life, generally idealized; historical detail had been brought in to teach readers who were being entertained.
Don't write your books for people who won't like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write, and don't try to please readers who like something different.
An aging writer has the not insignificant satisfaction of a shelf of books behind him that, as they wait for their ideal readers to discover them, will outlast him for a while.
I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.
We're journalists, so our default position is we're not writing editorial. We're trying to bring information to readers, viewers, so that they can make up their own conclusions.
Most people don't have the money to spend on advertising to create awareness among readers, nor do they have the contacts at newspapers or magazines to get their books reviewed.
I was one of the first authors to have an active website. I'm totally obsessed with technology. I'm always looking for ways to connect with my readers. I answer all my fan mail.
'A Princess of Mars' may not have exerted the same colossal pull that Tarzan had on the global imagination, but its influence on generations of readers cannot be underestimated.
I think it's so important for young readers to find a book or series that ignites their passion for reading, especially boys, whose interest in reading wanes as they grow older.
There are so many people who don't know small towns exist. When I write, I want to give my readers two things: one is a sense of consolation, and two, I want to make them laugh.