A Quote by Mason Cooley

Lead the reader toward the thought, then stop a little short. — © Mason Cooley
Lead the reader toward the thought, then stop a little short.
I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.
By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.
In my couple of books, including Going Clear, the book about Scientology, I thought it seemed appropriate at the end of the book to help the reader frame things. Because we've gone through the history, and there's likely conflictual feelings in the reader's mind. The reader may not agree with me, but I don't try to influence the reader's judgment. I know everybody who picks this book up already has a decided opinion. But my goal is to open the reader's mind a little bit to alternative narratives.
Aesthetics - rather than reason - shapes our thought processes. First comes aesthetics, then logic. 'Thinking in Numbers' is not about an attempt to impress the reader but to include the reader, draw the reader in, by explaining my experiences - the beauty I feel in a prime number, for example.
But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must content itself with moving, exciting and amusing the reader. ...I do not think that there is any (short story) that will give the reader that thrill, that rapture, that fruitful energy which great art can produce.
The way we measure awareness is by how long you can stop thought. If you can't stop thought at all, then you are not powerful. You might be quite evolved, but you have no access to that evolution.
I try to use short sentences, short paragraphs and short chapters to keep the reader's interest.
Religion, as it is understood in the West, does not lead toward progress, and science does not lead toward humanism.
I'm a sporadic reader. I have moments when I can't stop... then I kind of forget that I can read. But then I go, 'Oh God, yeah, books!'
I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself, that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor memory; and then all of a sudden they stop.
Every reader of your ad is interested, else he would not be a reader. You are dealing with someone willing to listen. Then do your level best. That reader, if you lose him now, May never again be a reader
In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.
More than working toward the book's climax, I work toward the denouement. As a reader and a writer, that's where I find the real satisfaction.
Knowing our personal mission further enhances the flow of mysterious coincidences as we are guided toward our destinies. First we have a question, then dreams, daydreams, and intuitions lead us toward the answers, which usually are synchronistically provided by the wisdom of another human being.
An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.
We must move from ... the primacy of technology toward considerations of social justice and equity, from the dictates of organizational convenience toward the aspirations ofself realization and learning, from authoritarianism and dogmatism toward more participation, from uniformity and centralization toward diversity and pluralism, from the concept of work as hard and unavoidable, from life as nasty, brutish, and short toward work as purpose and self~fulfillment, a recognition of leisure as a valid activity in itself.
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