Reader Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The headline is the most important element of an ad. It must offer a promise to the reader of a believable benefit. And it must be phrased in a way to give it memory value.

I never give my work to somebody else and say, "What do you think about that?" I just don't trust anybody. If I think it's funny, or if I think it's silly, I send it in anyway because I'm just trying to please myself. I never try to please a certain audience. I think that's disastrous. There's no way in the world you can anticipate what your reader is going to like or dislike.

Charles M. Schulz

You see, dear reader, so much of what's doled out as punk merely amounts to saying I suck, you suck, the world sucks, and who gives a damn — which is, er, ah, somehow insufficient. Don't ask me why; I'm just an observer, really. But any observer could tell that, to put in in terms of Us vs. Them, saying the above is exactly what They would want you to do, because it amounts to capitulation.

Science popularization involves information about science explaining the things and their implications in detail, or any beliefs the reader might have and also tell them about the newer discoveries so as to enlarge the persons horizons.

Jayant Narlikar

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader.

I wish you were a mind-reader. I want you to know everything but I don't want to have to tell you. Because there are some things I don't want to say out loud.

Grappling with real-life concerns — from cloning to courtship, from living authentically to dying with dignity — has made me a better reader. Reciprocally, reading in a wisdom-seeking spirit has helped me greatly in my worldly grapplings. Not being held to the usual dues expected of a licensed humanist — professing specialized knowledge or publishing learned papers — I have been able to wander freely and most profitably in all the humanistic fields. I have come to believe that looking honestly for the human being, following the path wherever it leads, may itself be an integral part of finding it. A real question, graced by a long life to pursue it among the great books, has been an unadulterated blessing.

Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered.

William S. Burroughs

Dear Miss Manners: What should I say when I am introduced to a homosexual "couple?"
Gentle Reader: "How do you do?" "How do you do?"

I consider the theme of this book to be a most important one, for I am convinced, and I hope the reader will agree, that good relations between the sexes are basic to the development of good human relations in all societies.

And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.

A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world's struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand for the first time, his own worth.

Michael O'Brien (Canadian author)

Mrs. Honeywell was a reader, but those publishing houses demanding intellectual cooperation from the customers were not her field.

Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

Alberto Manguel

Every good story... must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure; a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique.

"Hypertext is a representation of the text which escapes and surprises by turns," I wrote. Given the pure unaccountability (it is literally impossible to read all the possible variations of a richly linked hypertext) a hyperfiction writer is always attuned to "how the reader will interpret the literature presented" since its presentation shifts and flows in its composition as well.

To read was precisely to enter another world, which was not the reader's own, and come back refreshed, ready to bear with equanimity the injustices and frustrations of this one. Reading was balm, amusement not incitement.

A second point is that, within the limits of plausible argument, the most instructive comparisons (whether of difference or similarity) are those that surprise. No Japanese will be surprised by a comparison with China, since it has been made for centuries, the path is well trodden, and people usually have their minds made up already. But a comparison of Japan with Austria or Mexico might catch the reader off her guard.

Benedict Anderson

If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.

The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes PAUSE. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and move on.

Robert J. Samuelson

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Cliff was a very smart guy, a reader, very eloquent. I just don't understand why he went, and not one of us.

Hero demolished both his friends and his soldiers, who had helped him in the execution of his plans; he found new friends, and raised other troops. I say, in spite of Machiavel and of the ingrates, that this policy of Hero is very bad, and that it is much more prudent to trust the troops which have tested and known value, and have friends whose loyalty has also been tested. The new and unknown ones are also unsafe. I leave the reader to push this reasoning further; all those who detest ingratitude, and who truly value friendship, will not remain neutral on this matter.

Frederick the Great

In this essay on econometrics in its conception and its use in economic planning for the betterment of man's fate, I will try to cover a very broad field.
When talking about the methodology in the particular fields mentioned - about which I am supposed to have a little more than second hand knowledge - I have always found it utterly inadequate to focus attention only on these special fields without seeing them in a much broader perspective.
Therefore it was inevitable that I should have to include in the field of vision of this paper also some branches of science where I can only speak as a layman, hopefully as a somewhat informed layman. For whatever blunders I may have made in these fields I must ask for the reader's forgiveness

Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.

Anthony Trollope