Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.
Agents of disruption, subversion, sabotage and disinformation tunnelers and smugglers, listeners and forgers, trainers and recruiters and talent spotters and couriers and watchers and seducers, assassins and balloonists, lip readers and disguise artists.
Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive, for the writer.
There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers.
A story has to be a good date, because the reader can stop at any time. Remember, readers are selfish and have no compulsion to be decent about anything.
It is possible to argue that the really influential book is not that which converts ten millions of casual readers, but rather that which converts the very few who, at any given moment, succeed in seizing power. Marx and Sorel have been influential in the modern world, not so much because they were best-sellers (Sorel in particular was not at all a widely read author), but because among their few readers were two men, called respectively Lenin and Mussolini.
When you trust your readers, you're hoping they will see what you see. Not every book is for every person.
The readers are the ones who let us live our dreams. I try to write books which are really compelling - that you'd take on vacation and rather than going out, you'd read in your hotel room because you had to find out what happened. Hopefully that's what readers are responding to.
If you put a pink cover on something, critics make a certain set of assumptions and may not even read the book. But my readers are happy with it.
It's important to write like your readers are brilliant.
Readers are made by readers - it is so obvious it is almost banal to say it.
If you aren't on Goodreads, you should be. I've said it before, it's like Facebook for readers on crack.
The best books come from someplace deep inside. . . . Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.
If you're bored, your readers will be bored. If you're faking it, you won't get the kind of readers you want.
Don't write down to your readers. The ones dumber than you can't read.
Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights.
The chattering bloody classes, or what I call the liberal Guardian readers, they're all buying SUVs to drive around London. I smile at these loons who drive their SUVs down to Sainsbury's and buy kiwi fruit from New Zealand. They're flown in from New Zealand for Christ sakes. They're the equivalent of environmental nuclear bombs!
I've been thinking so much about writing as a gift to readers - and how newness of subject (place or topic or person) is one of the biggest gifts at our disposal.
I don't think we need a critic to negotiate with the audience. People say, "Who are you writing for?" I'm writing for myself but my audience is anybody who knows how to read. I think a story should engage anybody who knows how to read. And I hope that my stories do, maybe on a different level for more sophisticated readers than, say, a high school kid, but still a story has got to grab you. That's why we read it.
I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.