No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence, or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

You must be aware that the reader is at least as bright as you are.

William Maxwell

We suggest that whenever anyone sits down to write he should imagine a crowd of his prospective readers (rather than a grammarian in cap and gown) looking over his shoulder. They will be asking such questions as: “What does this sentence mean?” “Why do you trouble to tell me that again?” “Why have you chosen such a ridiculous metaphor?” “Must I really read this long, limping sentence?” “Haven’t you got your ideas muddled here?” By anticipating and listing as many of these questions as possible, the writer will discover certain tests of intelligibility to which he may regularly submit his work before he sends it off to the printer.

Robert Graves AND Alan Hodge

The writer is only free when he can tell the reader to go jump in the lake. You want, of course, to get what you have to show across to him, but whether he likes it or not is no concern of the writer.

Flannery O’Connor

If you despise your readers, they will probably despise you.

Andrew Greeley

A WRITER FRIEND advised, when I was starting out on my first book: “Write like you talk.” I took that to mean that good writing must have a conversational quality, should not be arch or pretentious. And as you are aware when speaking to others when their attention lapses, so when writing you must think: How do I hold the reader’s attention?

Ken Auletta

I write; let the reader learn to read.

Mark Harris

Keep in mind that the person to write for is yourself. Tell the story that you most desperately want to read.

Susan Isaacs

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than write for the public and have no self.

Cyril Connolly

If the stuff you’re writing is not for yourself, it won’t work.

Stephen King

An author who assures you that he writes for himself alone and that he does not care whether he is heard or not is a boaster and is deceiving either himself or you.

François Mauriac

There’s no room for a reader in your mind: you don’t think of anything but the language you’re in.

E. L. Doctorow

Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it’s the readers who build that world in their own minds.

Ursula K. Le Guin

It is the business of the writer to hide the fact that writing is his business. Readers are not interested in the mechanics of authorship.

A. A. Milne

The process of writing is something in which a writer’s whole personality plays a part. A writer writes not only with his ideas but also with his instincts, with his intuition. The dark side of a personality also plays a very important role in the process of writing a book. The rational factor is something of which the writer is not totally aware. And so when a writer gives testimony about his books, he does it in a particularly subjective way. He gives a clear picture of only what he wanted to do, which rarely coincides with what he actually did. That is why a reader is sometimes in a better position to judge what a writer has done than the writer himself.

Mario Vargas Llosa

For the love of God don’t condescend! Don’t assume the attitude of saying, “See how clever I am, and what fun everybody else is!”

Charles Dickens,
IN A LETTER TO Frank Stone (1857)

Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader … by either the author or the people in the tale.

The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.

The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate.

Mark Twain

There should be two main objects in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message, and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader’s attention or check his habitual pace of reading—he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

Robert Graves AND Alan Hodge

Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.

George V. Higgins

What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what’s it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.

Isaac Asimov

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end. This is accomplished only when the narrative moves steadily ahead, not when it comes to a weary standstill, overloaded with every item uncovered in the research.

Barbara Tuchman

KURT VONNEGUT used to say to his class at Iowa, “You’ve got to be a good date for the reader.”

John Casey

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The author makes his readers, just as he makes his characters.

Henry James

The man who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

Arthur Schopenhauer

When you endeavor to be funny in every line you place an intolerable burden not only on yourself but on the reader. You have to allow the reader to breathe.

S. J. Perelman

A sentence may be as long as the writer pleases, provided that he confines it to a single connected range of ideas, and by careful punctuation prevents the reader from finding it either tedious or confusing.

Robert Graves AND Alan Hodge

The ordinary reader can only take in so many words in one gulp before his eyes come to a brief rest at a period. If the sentence has 30 words, he may have to pause for a moment and think. If it has over 40, chances are he’s been unable to take in the full meaning.

Rudolf Flesch

A writer who questions the capacity of the person at the other end of the line is not a writer at all, merely a schemer.

E. B. White