The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

An author is an artist who paints a picture in the imagination of the reader.

Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of the novel.

To be a critical reader means for me: (1) to affirm the enduring power of the Bible in my culture and in my own life and yet (2) to remain open enough to dare to...

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading — once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive — is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a...

There is no better adviser than a good book.

In college, you’re kind of designing who you want to be. And I wanted to be a big reader.

Julia could form no opinion of Robert, the bespectacled middle child, for he passed the entire journey with his nose stuck in a book, returning only monosyllabic answers to any questions put to him

A book is indeed dead until a reader brings it into life by reading it.

A writer uses his pen as a gun to kill readers.

The Word is alive. We have always known it. But it needs to be uttered, aloud or in the mind of a reader. Without a consciousness to tickle them into life, those books were dead.

The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author’s supervision swell gradually with the reader’s lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that...

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.

I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted,...

But a reader’s ambition knows no bounds.

A writer’s thoughts can act as an Aladdin’s lamp, which can enlighten and open the mind of a reader, by showing opportunities and beauties of life.

We love books because they are the greatest escape. That is because our own minds eye is the purest form of virtual reality.

What is meant to be heard is necessarily more direct in expression, and perhaps more boldly coloured, than what is meant for the reader.

If you don’t want to waste your time on thinking, start reading.

You are not responsible for the reader, you’re only responsible for what you are writing.

Good writing ain’t necessarily good reading.

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read...

Reading that pleases and profits, that together delights and instructs, has all that one should desire.

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides,...

A writer writes knowing that nothing else will elicit the same kind of satisfaction and personal triumph as molding the written word into a reader’s great experience.

As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or...

Write about the beauty of rainbows and the glint of reflected light that can enlighten readers’ minds.

Great writers wield their words like a weapon; a double-edged sword to strike their readers with truth where they least expect it. -Matthew D. Forgenti

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

If a book is worth reading, it will most probably be worth reading twice.

There’s something to be said for an author who clearly respects a reader.

Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle…

The serious reader in the age of technology is a rebel by definition: a protester without a placard, a Luddite without hammer or bludgeon. She reads on planes to picket the antiseptic nature of modern...

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

I used to always read with a pen in my hand, as if the author and I were in a conversation.

Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.

The purpose of a writer is to show the beauty and tragedy of life in the reader’s own mirror.

Stories come alive in the telling. (…)They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination and transform...

Now that you’re an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and...

In reading you must pursue to become a creator.

How, then, does the written word work? What part of a reader absorbs it – or should that be a double question: what part of a reader absorbs what part of a text? I think...

I am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always were. Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can...

I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are wrapped up in there jackets, lines of neat print on nicely bound pages. They look like such orderly, static things....

The great writer evokes the words that buried within hearts of readers.

If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.

A writer must be a lifelong reader to be good. And if you want to be a great writer, I’d suggest trying to live a long life by reading the ingredients of the foods you...