Reader Quotes

2239 quotes by 1386 authors

Don't dumb down; always write for your top five percent of readers. — Martin Amis
The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart. — Susan Sontag
I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience. — Annie Proulx
In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard. — Russell Baker
Say what you mean. Say what you see. Make a photograph, if you can, for the reader. — Stephen King
A piece of writing has to seduce the reader; it has to suspend disbelief and earn the reader's trust. — Po Bronson
You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next? — William Zinsser
I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting. — Clive James
I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer. — Elmore Leonard
Publishing should be a collaboration between authors and their smartest readers â€” and at some point the distinction should become meaningless, — Nick Denton
Poem in other words may or may not result from inspiration but must (in reader and author alike) produce it-- — Franz Wright
Way back in 1989, I got lucky with my first published story when it was selected for the Journey Prize anthology. Then I got lucky… — David Bergen
With humor, itâ€™s so subjective that trying to think of what the ideal reader would think would drive you crazy. — Calvin Trillin
I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history. — Jonathan Coe
I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four. — Jim Lehrer
I was not a big comic-book reader. — Brad Bird
My goal is to teach readers how to treat and respect themselves and each other in an entertaining way. I do that in all of… — Lisi Harrison
The surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definitive, and concrete. The greatest writers - Homer, Dante,… — William Strunk, Jr.
To read great books does not mean one becomes â€˜bookishâ€™; it means that something of the terrible insight of Dostoyevsky, of the richly-charged imagination of… — John Cowper Powys
No one ever became, or can become truly eloquent without being a reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of… — Fisher Ames

Who Wrote These Reader Quotes

1,386 authors contributed a total of 2,239 Reader Quotes, led by these top contributors: