Wayne C. Booth > Quotes

“There is pleasure from learning the simple truth, and there is a pleasure from learning that the truth is not simple.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction

“A literary work ... is, during the time one reads it, a friend with whom one has chosen to spend one's time. The question now is, what does this friendship do to my mind? What does this new friend ask me to notice, to desire, to care about? How does he or she invite me to view my fellow human beings?”
― Wayne Booth

“We may exhort ourselves to read tolerantly, we may quote Coleridge on the willing suspension of disbelief until we think ourselves totally suspended in a relativistic universe, and still we will find many books which postulate readers we refuse to become, books that depend on 'beliefs' or 'attitudes'...which we cannot adopt even hypothetically as our own.”
― Wayne Booth

“the author’s judgment is always present, always evident to anyone who knows how to look for it. Whether its particular forms are harmful or serviceable is always a complex question, a question that cannot be settled by any easy reference to abstract rules. As we begin now to deal with this question, we must never forget that though the author can to some extent choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction

“intellectual understanding is one of the best versions of the Golden Rule: Listen to others as you would have others listen to you. Precise demonstration of truth is important but not as important as the communal pursuit of it. Put in terms of Kant's categorical imperative, When addressing someone else's ideas, your obligation is to treat them as you believe all human beings ought to treat one another's ideas."
WAYNE C. BOOTH,”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Craft of Research

“the implied Shakespeare is thoroughly engaged with life, and he does not conceal his judgment on the selfish, the foolish, and the cruel.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction

“That sense of contributing to a community is never more rewarding than when you discover something that you believe can improve your readers’ lives by changing what and how they think.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Craft of Research

“When teachers are fully successful, they are successful beyond any of their conscious intentions about particular subjects: they make converts, they make souls that have been turned around to face a given way of being and moving in the world.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Vocation of a Teacher: Rhetorical Occasions, 1967-1988

“… no place is more filled with imagined voices than a library.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Craft of Research

“In any reading experience there is an implied dialogue among author, narrator, the other characters, and the reader.”
― Wayne C. Booth, What Every Novelist Needs to Know about Narrators

“Only in intimacy with obscenity can one know what is obscene.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction

“The most important unacknowledged narrators in modern fiction are the third-person “centers of consciousness” through whom authors have filtered their narratives.”
― Wayne C. Booth, What Every Novelist Needs to Know about Narrators

“Our main quarrel is with the author who makes his personal appearance a substitute for the artistic presentation of his subject, thinking that talking about the subject is equivalent to presenting it.”6”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction

“every time you go to a written source for information, you join a conversation between writers and readers that began more than five thousand years ago. And when you report your own research, you add your voice and can hope that other voices will respond to you, so that you can in turn respond to them.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Craft of Research

“Es por eso que cuando aprendes a investigar aprendes también a valorar la investigación confiable y transmitida en forma clara y exacta.”
― Wayne C. Booth, El Arte de la Investigación

“If you believe in what you’re doing and cannot find anyone else who shares your beliefs, all you can do is put your head down and press on.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Craft of Research

“In true research, you must switch the roles of student and teacher. When you do research, you learn something that others don’t know. So when you report it, you must think of your reader as someone who doesn’t know it but needs to and yourself as someone who will give her reason to want to know it.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Craft of Research

“When we understand not just the superficial shape of those elements but how they help us think about our research and its reporting, we are better able to plan, evaluate, and, most important, use the process not just to produce a good report but to think better about our entire project. The elements of a report-its structure, style, and methods of proof-are not empty formulas for convincing readers to accept our claims: they help us test our work and even discover new lines of thought.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Craft of Research

“when you write for others, you demand more of yourself than when you write for yourself alone.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Craft of Research