Readers Quotes
212 quotes
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one."
"I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage."
"The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more."
"Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading."
"More people are leaving TV behind to read my books than ever before. In the last year alone I gained over two readers (three, to be exact). So I’d like to take a moment and say thanks mom, dad, and kidnap victim I keep chained in the basement."
"Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know."
"When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced."[Books vs. Goons, L.A. Times, April 24, 2005]"
"Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves."
"If I told you that my global audience has shot up 100% in the last six months, what would you say? If you were to say, “So you went from one reader to two readers?” you’d be absolutely correct. And after I had congratulated you on your keen guess, I’d thank you for being 50% of my reading base."
"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."
"Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself."
"If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be."
"Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small."
"Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons."
"We were never organized readers who would see a book through to its end in any sory of logical order. We weave in and out of words like tourists on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour. Put a book down in the kitchen to go to the bathroom and you might return to find it gone, replaced by another of equal interest. We are indiscriminate."
"It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds."
"If I’m going to write a book every American will want to read, it’s got to have lots of pictures. Those pictures must also move, and all the words in the book must be spoken and available audibly for all the readers to hear as they watch."
"Hey, Geekoid!"yelled Duncan Dougal, "Why do you read so much? Don't you know how to watch TV?"
"We as authors sign a pact with our readers; they'll go on reading because they trust us to play fair with them and deliver what we've promised."
"One of the most dangerous of literary ventures is the little, shy, unimportant heroine whom none of the other characters value. The danger is that your readers may agree with the other characters."
"Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are wrapped up in their jackets, lines of neat print on nicely bound pages. They look like such orderly, static things. Then you, the reader come along. You open the book jacket, and it can be like opening the gates to an unknown city, or opening the lid of a treasure chest. You read the first word and you're off on a journey of exploration and discovery."
"And she is the readerwho browses the shelfand looks for new worldsbut finds herself."
"As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt; we seldom care about the good manners of morals. Repentance puts an end to conversation; forgiveness becomes the stuff of moralistic tracts. Revenge - bloodthirsty, justice-hungry revenge - is the very essence of romance, lying at the heart of much of the best fiction."
"Love, doesn't need any stamp of society to prove itself, it just happens"
"There is nothing more amazing than being with the one you love."
"I want you to tell all these people that I wanted more time to spend with them. Tell them I meant to, tell them I wanted to hear what they said and tell them what was on my mind."
"The death of a billionaire is worth more to the media than the lives of a billion poor people."
"Men, I say, but better to call them human spiders that go crawling in between and under the tables with rags in their hands, crushed humans...) Quotes from readers choice of MK Gandhi and his efforts to regenerate the human being,"
"We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write."
"When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear."
"If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that."
"The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work."
"I know that no reader ever asks a question. A writer must force his favors upon his readers."
"All writers are waiting for replies. That’s what I’ve learned. Maybe all human beings are"
"The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large."
"No, I am not imagining a book-burning, warmongering, anti-intellectual fascist regime – in my plan, there is no place for re ghters who light up the Homers and Lady Murasakis and Cao Xueqins stashed under your bed – because, for starters, I’m not banning literature per se. I’m banning the reading of literature. Purchasing and collecting books and other forms of literature remains perfectly legitimate as long as you don’t peruse the literature at hand."
"You are more likely to find three TVs inside a randomly selected house than you are to find a single book that is or was not read to pass an exam, to please God, or to be a better cook."
"Hey, Geekoid!" yelled Duncan Dougal, "Why do you read so much? Don't you know how to watch TV?"
"When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be prod"
"Great readers (are) those who know early that there is never going to be time to read all there is to read, but do their darnedest anyway."
Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond
"She never managed to find herself in these books no matter how hard she tried, exhuming traits from between the pages and donning them for an hour, a day, a week. We think in some ways, we have all done this our whole lives, searching for the book that will give us the keys to ourselves, let us into a wholly formed personality as though it were a furnished room to let. As though we could walk in and look around and say to the gray-haired landlady behind us, "We'll take it."
"The characters within a book were, from a certain point of view, identical on some fundamental level ‒ there weren't any images of them, no physical tangibility whatsoever. They were pictures in the reader's head, constructs of imagination and ideas, given shape by the writer's work and skill and the reader's imagination. Parents, of a sort."
"I never minded the random scribblings of other readers, found them interesting in fact. It is a truth universally acknowledged that people write the darndest things in the margins of their books."
"The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison."
"Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp."
"Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate."
Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
"Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose."
"Of all books printed, probably not more than half are ever read. Many are embalmed in public libraries; many go into private quarters to fill spaces; many are glanced at and put away...scarcely opened until the fire needs kindling. The most ardent book-lovers are not always the greatest readers; indeed, the rabid bibliomaniac seldom reads at all. To him books are as ducats to the miser, something to be hoarded and not employed... So pleasant it is to buy book; so tiresome to utilize them."
"There were the people who read and there were the others. Whether you were a reader or a nonreader--it was quickly noted. There was no greater distinction between people. People were amazed when he asserted that and many shook their head at such crankiness. But that's how it was."
"...but one can't be irredeemable who shows reverence for books."
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