Russell Freedman Quotes

I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.

Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

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.

No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

It's also a lot easier to convince people to read an entertaining story than any other type of book!

Book after book, I get hooked, every time the writer talks to me like a friend.

One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

When I was a young boy, I loved spending hours in St. Franics Xavier's school library at Saint Louis University. The feel of the books in my hands and the magical new worlds I discovered always drew me back to that fantastic place. Each time I visited, I could expect to find a new adventure and from time to time use my imagination to revisit my favorite place and enjoy Green Eggs and Ham in a house, with a mouse, on a train, on a plane, in a box, with a fox.

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

If the reader enters a kind of immersive experience reading a book, then I have to enter a kind of immersive state to do my best work.

I write short stories. They may appear big in size, but when you consider it, they're four or five novels in one... In return for picking up one of my books, I'm trying to give them value for their money... the goal of writing any book is to create the illusion that what you are reading is reality and you're part of it.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

The experience of reading a comic should not be the time it takes to turn each page.

Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.

I feel lucky that I read so many books as a kid because I know that no matter how much I appreciate a book now, and I can love a book very much, it's never going to be that childhood passion for a book. There's some element, something special about the way they're reading books and experiencing books that's finite.

The point of page one is to make people turn to page two and if at the end of the book people think that the book was good value for money, you have achieved something, because if you haven't achieved those things you're not going to achieve the other thing.

I leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent of promise that comes with all new books, and stopped to read the start of a sentence that caught my eye.

A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.

Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

As I see it, a successful story of any kind should be almost like hypnosis: You fascinate the reader with your first sentence, draw them in further with your second sentence and have them in a mild trance by the third. Then, being careful not to wake them, you carry them away up the back alley of your narrative and when they are hopelessly lost within the story, having surrendered themselves to it, you do them terrible violence with a softball bag and then lead them whimpering to the exit on the last page. Believe me, they'll thank you for it.

It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.