Reader Quotes

“The true critic and the true reader are inextricably bound. They both recognise that literature is not just about plot or character or rhythm or rhyme. It is about meaning. It is about impact. It is about transformation.”
― Alok Mishra

“It is not the quantity of reading but the quality of engagement that defines literary worth.”
― Alok Mishra

“Poetry that emerges from a poet’s mind becomes complete only when it enters into the reader’s sphere of comprehension.”
― Suman Pokhrel, भारत शाश्वत आवाज [Bharat Shashwat Aawaz]

“Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.”
― Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas

“A reader takes poetry deep within him or her by accommodating it within his/her range of consciousness.”
― Suman Pokhrel, भारत शाश्वत आवाज [Bharat Shashwat Aawaz]

“Poetry emerging from a poet enters into the reader only when it comes within the readers’ 'sphere of intellect.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Poetry emerging from a poet enters into the reader only when it comes within the readers’ 'sphere of intellect. A reader cannot take poetry by expanding it beyond his/her consciousness, rather can take by shrinking it within. Thus, there exists a chance of every poem getting changed while reaching every reader. This ‘getting changed’ is a form of ‘getting translated’, in a way. So, every assimilation of any poem is a translation.”
― Suman Pokhrel, भारत शाश्वत आवाज [Bharat Shashwat Aawaz]

“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, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?”
― Gustave Flaubert

“The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.”
― James Joyce

“Turn the page, your heroine is still there, breathe, relax, life is beautiful: you're in a book!”
― Gabrielle Dubois

“Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.”
― Lawrence Clark Powell

“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 travel, on commuter trains to insist on individualism in the midst of the herd, in hotel rooms to boycott the circumstances that separate her from her usual sources of comfort and stimulation, during office breaks to escape from the banal conversation of office mates, and at home to revolt against the pervasive and mind-deadening irrelevance of television.”
― Eric Burns, Joy of Books

“The hours tick by as I lie in bed.
Memories keep surfacing, tormenting me into unbelievable sadness. I can't bring myself to move. I can't fight the memories that keep filling my thoughts. I stay curled in the fetal position as each memory plays out. I can't stop them from coming. I can't make them go away. Nothing can distract me. I can't block the memories, so they continue to come.”
― Ashley Earley, Alone in Paris

“The great writer evokes the words
that buried within hearts of readers.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“فكر قبل أن تتكلم، واقرأ قبل أن تفكر”
― Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“Henry was inclined to drift towards books as keenly as a duck paddles for bread crusts.”
― Kevin Ansbro, The Fish That Climbed a Tree

“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 mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it), I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them, but I cannot help their Unbelief; and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“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.”
― Georges Bataille

“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.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

“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.”
― Felix J Palma, The Map of Time

“There's the mackerel of the cornflake for you, you dirty reader of filth and nastiness.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“A series of books, dilapidated and faded, sit bundled together. Most of the bindings are separating from the yellowed pages, but each is at home in its battered state. Their wrinkled pages and discolored skin tell not of old age, but of a good life. These books, unlike so many others, were not just read, but revisited, loved, and experienced.”
― Kelseyleigh Reber, If I Resist

“As the author, I construct an artifact out of words, but the words are meaningless until they're animated by the consciousness of the reader. The story is co-told by the author and the reader, and every story is incomplete until a reader comes along and interprets it.”
― Ken Liu, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

“It ain't just about writing on some documents,
author writes on to the readers' heart and mind.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“Writing is a solitary pleasure. Reading is a solitary pleasure. Does this mean that the writer and the readers do not like humanity?
On the contrary! Beyond time and space, beyond colors and customs, the writer and the readers share dreams, knowledge, hopes, imagination, and love of mankind.”
― Gabrielle Dubois

“The only advise, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I fell at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fatter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can posses.”
― Virginia Woolf, How Should One Read a Book?

“When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards. But when I think of my work out in the world, written and published, I like to imagine it’s being read by some stranger somewhere who doesn’t have anyone around him to talk to about books and writing—maybe a would-be writer, maybe a little lonely, who depends on a certain kind of writing to make him feel more comfortable in the world.”
― Don DeLillo

“Seekers of wisdom, seekers of life.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

“Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.”
― Irvine Welsh, Skagboys