Reading Quotes | Beyond Motive 4/7

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Reading Quotes

"Quite casually I wander into my plot, poke around with my characters for a while, then amble off, leaving no moral proved and no reader improved."

Thorne Smith, American Writer

"While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote."

Mason Cooley, American Writer

"When you're sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can't."

Steven Soderbergh, American Director

"An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers."

Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian Novelist

"At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English Poet

"I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them."

Jhumpa Lahiri, American Author

Reading, Right, Writing

"I try to be careful about wording. One of the things I've tried to combat in my blog is the notion that journalists are arrogant and unconcerned with the readership."

Nicholas D. Kristof, American Writer

"For a while I felt very alone; sort of out there in the world of comics, especially here in the States."

Bill Sienkiewicz, American Artist

Reading, States, World

"I do believe that reading can help you understand what you're writing and see what others are doing. But sometimes the desire for more information can act as an inhibitor."

Manuel Puig, Argentinian Author

Reading, Act, Desire, Help, Information

"There is a wonder in reading Braille that the sighted will never know: to touch words and have them touch you back."

Jim Fiebig, American Author

Reading, Will, Wonder, Words

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

C. S. Lewis, British Author

Reading, Infinite, Talk, Want, Word

"When the student is ready... the lesson appears."

Gene Oliver, American Athlete

"I don't think I make much of a distinction between the 'real' and the 'fantastic.' They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I'm concerned."

Alice Hoffman, American Author

"Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it."

Ben Okri, Nigerian Poet

Reading, Act, Writing

"Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading."

M. H. Abrams, American Critic

Reading, Work, Hardwork

"The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring."

Raymond Chandler, American Writer

"If there was no Bible, it would be no matter whether you could read or not. Reading other books would do you no good."

Jupiter Hammon, American Poet

Reading, Bible, Books

"The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat."

George Byron, Scottish Poet

"It is not the task of a reader to please her subjects."

Joyce Maynard, American Writer

"I am not opposed to the limited use of polygraphs in a case where a person is suspected of wrongdoing. But widespread use of the polygraph as a screening tool goes far beyond what is acceptable."

Jeff Bingaman, American Politician

"Very few pilots even know how to read Morse code anymore. But if a pilot could read Morse code, he could tell which beacon he was approaching by the code that was flashing from it."

Mike Ferguson, American Politician

"I started reading and talking and interviewing nutritionists and a thread was starting to form for me which is - a protein digests in a different rate of speed than a carbohydrate."

Suzanne Somers, American Actress

Reading, Talking

"After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter."

Jean Cocteau, French Director

Reading, Death, Writer

"If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves."

Don Marquis, American Poet

Reading, Want, Writing

"I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other."

John McGahern, Irish Writer

Reading, Writing

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government."

John Sharp Williams, American Politician

Reading, Government, History

"I don't exactly know what it means to be ready. A cake when the oven timer goes off? Am I fully baked, or only half-baked?"

Jessica Savitch, American Journalist

"I think she was ready to go. Not to be kicked out. Go at the top. Undefeated."

Denis Thatcher, British Businessman

"For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry."

Paul Muldoon, English Poet

Reading, Poetry, People, Reason

"In reading, a lonely quiet concert is given to our minds; all our mental faculties will be present in this symphonic exaltation."

Stephane Mallarme, French Poet

Reading, Lonely, Present, Quiet

"And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing."

Jean M. Auel, American Writer

Reading, Beginning, Word

"We only understand that which already within us."

Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss Philosopher

"When I got to the reading all the work, I was reduced to being an actor in an experimental play that I'd already written. And I didn't want to be an actor."

David Antin, American Poet

Reading, Work, Actor, Being, Play

"These are just the tip of the iceberg, because I read and read and read. I read everything."

Jack Vance, American Author

"I was reading so much about myself in the papers that was not me."

Rebecca Loos, English Celebrity

"With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how."

Doris Lessing, English Writer

"If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they - the Administration - believe."

Jeff Gannon, American Journalist

"I notice when I'm on these trips, I read like mad. It's the only thing that seems to center me, bring me back to remembering who I am. Or forgetting who I am!"

Judith Guest, American Novelist

"When I read, I'm purely a reader."

Anne Tyler, American Novelist

"I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness."

Wilfred Owen, English Soldier

Reading, Satisfaction, Thinking

"When we have spiritual reading at meals, when we have the rosary at night, when we have study groups, forums, when we go out to distribute literature at meetings, or sell it on the street corners, Christ is there with us."

Dorothy Day, American Activist

Reading, Christ, Literature, Meetings, Night

"Do not suppose, however, that I intend to urge a diet of classics on anybody. I have seen such diets at work. I have known people who have actually read all, or almost all, the guaranteed Hundred Best Books. God save us from reading nothing but the best."

Robertson Davies, Canadian Novelist

Reading, Diet, Work, God, People

"When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before."

Clifton Fadiman, American Writer

"Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition."

A. R. Ammons, American Poet

Reading, Poetry, Class, First, Poems

"The thing I noticed about Jack was when we did a reading of the script, just to warm up."

Amanda Peet, American Actress

"Some of the material out there - I don't want to say that it's all bad - but there's a lot of bad stuff out there. You just continue reading scripts, and eventually you find something you connect with."

Jay Hernandez, American Actor

"The ideal, it seems to me, is to show things happening and allow the reader to decide what they mean."

John M. Ford, American Writer

"It's much easier to consume the visual image than to read something."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American Poet

"He that loves reading has everything within his reach."

William Godwin, English Writer

"If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children, things that touch your soul."

Roger McGough, British Poet

Reading, Poetry, Father, Soul, People

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