If the reader looks, I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories. Italo Calvino
It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the reader's opportunities to follow it at every step. Harry Mathews
Iwas not a reader at all, not until I discovered 'The Hobbit.' That changed my life. It gave me the courage to read. It led me to the 'Lord of the Rings' series. And once I'd read that, I knew I could read anything because I had just read thousands of pages. Richard Paul Evans
O Day of days when we can read! The reader and the book, either without the other is naught. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up. Joan Didion
One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since. Beverly Cleary
Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream. Joan Didion
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. Mark Twain
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader. Julian Barnes
Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment. Lynn Abbey
The idea that certain things in life - and in the universe - don't yield up their secrets is something that requires a slightly more mature reader to accept. Samuel R.Delany
The most annoying and full-of-crap thing a writer says is, 'I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it.' A writer without a reader doesn't exist. Harlan Coben
The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Margaret Atwood
The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero. Mary McCarthy
The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it. Anne McCaffrey
The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire. Michael Chabon
The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it. Norman Cousins
The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable. Julian Barnes