Book Quote by Ford Madox Ford

The novelist helps us to see things we might not notice otherwise.

— Madeleine L'Engle

Each reader reads only what is already within himself. The book is only a sort of optical instrument which the writer offers to the…

— Marcel Proust

Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the…

— Marcel Proust

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,…

— Marcel Proust

And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger,…

— Paul Auster

The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.

— Anonymous

We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it.

— Thomas Carlyle

“In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical…

— Marcel Proust

A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A…

— Maurice Blanchot

A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think.

— Mohsin Hamid

One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.

— Anne Fadiman

The novel that an author writes is often not the novel that the reader reads, and most of the 'messages' in a novel are…

— Ken Liu