readers

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
dbd3681	A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.	readers reading reading-books	George R.R. Martin
c749226	The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.	book-lovers books readers reading	Patricia A. McKillip
f4fd986	Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.	readers readers-and-writers reading reading-books reasons-for-reading inspirational	Alberto Manguel
c48741c	Dogeared pages were Antichrist of book lovers everywhere.	readers	Jennifer L. Armentrout
9f49591	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.	readers stories write writing	Neil Gaiman
0825a31	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.	ideas impact readers reading	Salman Rushdie
1c5a9b6	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.	adventure advice book books covers discovery inspirational reader readers	David Almond
4b8adef	"1. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the things they read (or watch, or listen to, or taste, or whatever). They're also entitled to express them online. 2. Sometimes those opinions will be ones you don't like. 3. Sometimes those opinions won't be very nice. 4. The people expressing those may be (but are not always) assholes. 5. However, if your solution to this "problem" is to vex, annoy, threaten or harrass them, you are a bigger asshole. 6. You may also be twelve. 7. You are not responsible for anyone else's actions or karma, but you are responsible for your own. 8. So leave them alone and go about your own life."	bullying censorship criticism freedom-of-expression freedom-of-opinion freedom-of-speech opinions readers reviewers reviewing reviews	John Scalzi
e9940ad	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.	life readers reading writers	Lloyd Alexander
92b919d	Up until then, whenever anyone had mentioned the possibility of making a film adaptation, my answer had always been, 'No, I'm not interested.' I believe that each reader creates his own film inside his head, gives faces to the characters, constructs every scene, hears the voices, smells the smells. And that is why, whenever a reader goes to see a film based on a novel that he likes, he leaves feeling disappointed, saying: 'the book is so much better than the film.	film films-based-on-novels novels readers	Paulo Coelho
fb8a68e	It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.	library readers	Anne Fadiman
5b83e01	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.	readers self-awareness self-recognition writers writing	Marcel Proust
fab69ac	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.	library readers reflection	Alberto Manguel
b6a96d1	Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone.	readers storytelling writing	Rebecca Solnit
0085625	Life ... is a bit like reading. ... If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it's yours. Similarly, why live your life? Because it's yours. But what if such an answer gradually becomes less and less convincing?	living readers writers	Julian Barnes
20f87d2	Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.	censors reader readers	Alberto Manguel
a597803	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.	authors readers writing	Virginia Woolf
84d064b	Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.	books readers reading	Alberto Manguel
f5e3d2b	The reader! You, dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction. You've read me this far, then? Even this far? For what discreditable motive? How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to your mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off? Where's your shame?	addicts biblioholism passion readers reading	John Barth
d624444	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.	characters ideas imagination readers writers	Jim Butcher
c6bfde6	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.	books readers reading subtlety	Carol Shields
0b6eab7	If the writer were more like a reader, he'd be a reader, not a writer. It's as uncomplicated as that.	readers writers writing	Julian Barnes
86472dd	There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.	craft readers reasons why writers writing	Umberto Eco
18332ca	Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victims of books.	readers reading	Holly Black
fc4af5c	Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation, and new people, new readers, need to be brought into the conversation too.	literature readers	Neil Gaiman
2581d20	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 reading	Margaret Atwood
3a092a6	I'm a great reader that never has time to read.	free-time readers reading time	Eudora Welty
0598558	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.	forgiveness morals readers repentance revenge romance	Alberto Manguel
de2de3f	"Zaid's finest moment, however, comes in his second paragraph, when he says that "the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more." That's me! And you, probably! That's us!"	readers	Nick Hornby
758d158	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.	readers reading	Larry McMurtry
f931067	Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope--and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing--that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that...' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already. It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so.	authorship book-reviews books collaboration essays readers writers writing	Christopher Hitchens
38729dc	Writing is a craft, being an author is work, and having readers and a following is a gift.	craft followers readers work writing	Michael J. Kannengieser
e376956	This is the strange life of books that you enter along as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes where we meet.	books readers reading writers writing	Rebecca Solnit
45c17d3	"Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?" They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again."	metaphor readers writers	Steven Pressfield
dea86e0	Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell.	gratitude librarians readers reading thanks	Max Barry
672e66e	We were all serious readers, sitting on wooden chairs at rows of lecterns, turning the pages, united in mutual love of isolation.	library readers reading	Michael Moorcock
f88b7a0	gr adm fqT pnj shsh khtb r bh khwby my shnkht, chh mHqq brjsth y my shd	novelist readers reviewers writers	Gustave Flaubert
ee05013	When you write it, don't write it in the manner of a spooky story. Don't try to give an explanation. Just say that I don't know what to make of it, just write it like I tell it, so the reader can make up his own mind.	interpretation magical-realism readers stories	David Mitchell
ee0fe07	Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'.	façades fiction readers reading writing	Iris Murdoch
a5a17ac	The books on my shelves do not know me until I open them, yet I am certain that they address me -- me and every other reader -- by name; they await our comments and opinions. I am presumed in Plato as I am presumed in every book, even in those I'll never read.	known-reader readers reading	Alberto Manguel
5733ba1	Decker looked behind him. 'That's nice.' 'What?' said Mars, looking too. 'Where the NAACP office was they built a public library. You know people who read are a lot more tolerant and open-minded than those who don't.' 'Great, so let's get everybody in the world a library card.	readers tolerance	David Baldacci
8a9e418	And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow-men.	conceit-of-wisdom dangers-of-reading readers reading semblance-of-wisdom	Alberto Manguel
90d4db2	What I can say with honesty is that my research in Russia and in Germany has brought me nothing but the worsening of my eyesight and the waste of years of my life. And I did it all for you.	readers research worsening	Nick Tosches
fb2c7dd	You are your own best teacher. ~Jimmy Buffett	readers writers	Jimmy Buffett
4e83d7e	Geschichten sind unser Gedachtnis, Bibliotheken die Lagerstatten fur dieses Gedachtnis und Lesen das Handwerk, mit dem wir dieses Gedachtnis neu erschaffen konnen, indem wir es rezitieren und glossieren, es wieder in unsere eigene Erfahrung ruckubersetzen und so auf dem aufbauen, was fruhere Generationen fur bewahrenswert hielten.	memory readers reception	Alberto Manguel
c407c5a	This is where we should start focusing this conversation: how men (as readers, critics, and editors) can start to bear the responsibility for becoming better, broader readers.	feminism men readers reading	Roxane Gay
5adaf0e	To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.	intriguing life readers secrets	Elizabeth Kostova

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.

George R.R. Martin

c749226

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.

book-lovers books readers reading

Patricia A. McKillip

f4fd986

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

readers readers-and-writers reading reading-books reasons-for-reading inspirational

Alberto Manguel

c48741c

Dogeared pages were Antichrist of book lovers everywhere.

readers

Jennifer L. Armentrout

9f49591

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.

readers stories write writing

Neil Gaiman

0825a31

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.

ideas impact readers reading

Salman Rushdie

1c5a9b6

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.

adventure advice book books covers discovery inspirational reader readers

David Almond

4b8adef

"1. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the things they read (or watch, or listen to, or taste, or whatever). They're also entitled to express them online. 2. Sometimes those opinions will be ones you don't like. 3. Sometimes those opinions won't be very nice. 4. The people expressing those may be (but are not always) assholes. 5. However, if your solution to this "problem" is to vex, annoy, threaten or harrass them, you are a bigger asshole. 6. You may also be twelve. 7. You are not responsible for anyone else's actions or karma, but you are responsible for your own. 8. So leave them alone and go about your own life."

bullying censorship criticism freedom-of-expression freedom-of-opinion freedom-of-speech opinions readers reviewers reviewing reviews

John Scalzi

e9940ad

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.

life readers reading writers

Lloyd Alexander

92b919d

Up until then, whenever anyone had mentioned the possibility of making a film adaptation, my answer had always been, 'No, I'm not interested.' I believe that each reader creates his own film inside his head, gives faces to the characters, constructs every scene, hears the voices, smells the smells. And that is why, whenever a reader goes to see a film based on a novel that he likes, he leaves feeling disappointed, saying: 'the book is so much better than the film.

film films-based-on-novels novels readers

Paulo Coelho

fb8a68e

It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.

library readers

Anne Fadiman

5b83e01

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.

readers self-awareness self-recognition writers writing

Marcel Proust

fab69ac

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.

library readers reflection

Alberto Manguel

b6a96d1

Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone.

readers storytelling writing

Rebecca Solnit

0085625

Life ... is a bit like reading. ... If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it's yours. Similarly, why live your life? Because it's yours. But what if such an answer gradually becomes less and less convincing?

living readers writers

Julian Barnes

20f87d2

Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.

censors reader readers

Alberto Manguel

a597803

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.

authors readers writing

Virginia Woolf

84d064b

Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

books readers reading

Alberto Manguel

f5e3d2b

The reader! You, dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction. You've read me this far, then? Even this far? For what discreditable motive? How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to your mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off? Where's your shame?

addicts biblioholism passion readers reading

John Barth

d624444

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.

characters ideas imagination readers writers

Jim Butcher

c6bfde6

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.

books readers reading subtlety

Carol Shields

0b6eab7

If the writer were more like a reader, he'd be a reader, not a writer. It's as uncomplicated as that.

readers writers writing

Julian Barnes

86472dd

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

craft readers reasons why writers writing

Umberto Eco

18332ca

Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victims of books.

readers reading

Holly Black

fc4af5c

Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation, and new people, new readers, need to be brought into the conversation too.

literature readers

Neil Gaiman

2581d20

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 reading

Margaret Atwood

3a092a6

I'm a great reader that never has time to read.

free-time readers reading time

Eudora Welty

0598558

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.

forgiveness morals readers repentance revenge romance

Alberto Manguel

de2de3f

"Zaid's finest moment, however, comes in his second paragraph, when he says that "the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more." That's me! And you, probably! That's us!"

readers

Nick Hornby

758d158

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.

readers reading

Larry McMurtry

f931067

Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope--and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing--that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that...' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already. It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so.

authorship book-reviews books collaboration essays readers writers writing

Christopher Hitchens

38729dc

Writing is a craft, being an author is work, and having readers and a following is a gift.

craft followers readers work writing

Michael J. Kannengieser

e376956

This is the strange life of books that you enter along as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes where we meet.

books readers reading writers writing

Rebecca Solnit

45c17d3

"Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?" They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again."

metaphor readers writers

Steven Pressfield

dea86e0

Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That's a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn't read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that's creepy as hell.

gratitude librarians readers reading thanks

Max Barry

672e66e

We were all serious readers, sitting on wooden chairs at rows of lecterns, turning the pages, united in mutual love of isolation.

library readers reading

Michael Moorcock

f88b7a0

gr adm fqT pnj shsh khtb r bh khwby my shnkht, chh mHqq brjsth y my shd

novelist readers reviewers writers

Gustave Flaubert

ee05013

When you write it, don't write it in the manner of a spooky story. Don't try to give an explanation. Just say that I don't know what to make of it, just write it like I tell it, so the reader can make up his own mind.

interpretation magical-realism readers stories

David Mitchell

ee0fe07

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'.

façades fiction readers reading writing

Iris Murdoch

a5a17ac

The books on my shelves do not know me until I open them, yet I am certain that they address me -- me and every other reader -- by name; they await our comments and opinions. I am presumed in Plato as I am presumed in every book, even in those I'll never read.

known-reader readers reading

Alberto Manguel

5733ba1

Decker looked behind him. 'That's nice.' 'What?' said Mars, looking too. 'Where the NAACP office was they built a public library. You know people who read are a lot more tolerant and open-minded than those who don't.' 'Great, so let's get everybody in the world a library card.

readers tolerance

David Baldacci

8a9e418

And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow-men.

conceit-of-wisdom dangers-of-reading readers reading semblance-of-wisdom

Alberto Manguel

90d4db2

What I can say with honesty is that my research in Russia and in Germany has brought me nothing but the worsening of my eyesight and the waste of years of my life. And I did it all for you.

readers research worsening

Nick Tosches

fb2c7dd

You are your own best teacher. ~Jimmy Buffett

readers writers

Jimmy Buffett

4e83d7e

Geschichten sind unser Gedachtnis, Bibliotheken die Lagerstatten fur dieses Gedachtnis und Lesen das Handwerk, mit dem wir dieses Gedachtnis neu erschaffen konnen, indem wir es rezitieren und glossieren, es wieder in unsere eigene Erfahrung ruckubersetzen und so auf dem aufbauen, was fruhere Generationen fur bewahrenswert hielten.

memory readers reception

Alberto Manguel

c407c5a

This is where we should start focusing this conversation: how men (as readers, critics, and editors) can start to bear the responsibility for becoming better, broader readers.

feminism men readers reading

Roxane Gay

5adaf0e

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.

intriguing life readers secrets

Elizabeth Kostova