400 Quotes About Readers

Readers are born free and ought to remain free.

Tolan feels the tears running down her face, only now they have nothing to do with a broken crayon or the hole it tore in her picture, and everything to do with how light the book is in her mother's hands.

Regardless of what we are writing, however, we must treat our readers with dignity. Don’t announce that you are going to tell a funny joke or story. Give readers the dignity of deciding for themselves if it is humorous. Besides, doing so makes it less funny because you have given away the element of surprise. Don’t say a story will be sad or happy or startling. That inoculates the reader against sadness or happiness or shock. Just tell the story (p. 159).

And the maiden found her escape in books, the words created by the pen of some stranger who would creep into her mind and rearrange the furniture.

Readers are Leaders!

My penance for barely being present in the world, not the world between the pages of books, or the layered atmosphere of my own mind, but the world that is real to others

A woman who reads is a woman who knows she must act: in courage, in creativity, in kindness, and often in defiance of the darkness around her. She understands that life itself is a story and that she has the power to shape her corner of the drama.

I’m not sure what readers want.

What I can say with honesty is that my research in Russia and in Germany has brought me nothing but the worsening of my eyesight and the waste of years of my life. And I did it all for you.