Reader Motivation Quotes

Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up and stop reading it? There may be lots of reasons. But often the answer is you don't care what happens. So what makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author's cruelty. And the reader's sympathy...it takes a mean author to write a good story.

If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book.

The most important part of a story is the ending. No one reads a book to get to the middle.

Semiotics is really interested in the questions like, what keeps you watching something, what keeps you - you know, what keeps you listening to a story on the radio? Like, what keeps you turning the pages in a book? What's the pleasure of it that's moving you forward, that's pulling you in and grabbing you and pulling you forward?

Don't write for who your reader is. Write for what your reader wants to be.

What reader wants to be told what attitude to strike?

Who is the ideal reader? God only knows.

But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.

Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves.

I am as interested in seeing what happens to my characters as any reader; that is why I tell kids that writers write for the same reason readers read - to find out the end of the story.

No one reads to hear someone complain about the weather or how poorly their children are behaving. You have to give the readers a reason to turn the page. As a writer you have to invite someone to turn the page. And that is a skill you have to refine. That is why you have to read. You have to read to learn what it is that makes people turn the page.

People never read my books for the quality of the documentary value.

I don't want people reading my books just because they're horror or mysteries. I want them to read them because they're Joe Lansdale books.

I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader.

Readers respond to every genre intensely, if it's a genre that appeals to them. Again, who can say why anyone enjoys horror and dark fantasy? If I can't answer the question for myself, I wouldn't dream of trying to answer it for others.