Reader quotes
381 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside reader — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them."
"Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind."
"Writing shouldn't come between the reader and what's being described. It should be as transparent as possible."
"Reader, I married him."
"The one thing I wished for my children is that they'd be readers."
"It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is."
"The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want."
"Leave out the parts that readers tend to skip."
"We're all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers."
"The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve…something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness — those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings."
"Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too."
"We who have been true readers all our life fully realize the enormous of our being which we owe to authors."
"Readers forget that one can critique yet still admire."
"I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing."
"Never, ever underestimate your readers. Everything you do registers."
"Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story."
"Writers are storytellers. So are readers."
"If you aren't aware of the reader, you're working in a vacuum."
"We must meet children as equals in that area of our nature where we are their equals...The child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man."
"The best readers come to fiction to be free of ... all that isn't fiction."
