A Quote by Pascal Mercier

There were people who read and there were the others. Whether you were the a reader or a non-reader was soon apparent. There was no greater distinction between people. — © Pascal Mercier
There were people who read and there were the others. Whether you were the a reader or a non-reader was soon apparent. There was no greater distinction between people.
I've always been an avid reader. Everyone in my family read a lot. Considering we were from a little town, we were pretty literate.
When men and women across the country reported how happy they felt, researchers found that jugglers were happier than others. By and large, the more roles, the greater the happiness. Parents were happier than nonparents, and workers were happier than nonworkers. Married people were much happier than unmarried people. Married people were generally at the top of the emotional totem pole.
We must be forewarned that only rarely does a text easily lend itself to the reader's curiosity... the reading of a text is a transaction between the reader and the text, which mediates the encounter between the reader and writer. It is a composition between the reader and the writer in which the reader "rewrites" the text making a determined effort not to betray the author's spirit.
The characters within a book were, from a certain point of view, identical on some fundamental level ? there weren't any images of them, no physical tangibility whatsoever. They were pictures in the reader's head, constructs of imagination and ideas, given shape by the writer's work and skill and the reader's imagination. Parents, of a sort.
My family were Russian Jews. They got you to read as soon as you could. And then assumed you would read a lot. People didn't really tell stories but they were good talkers. That's important for a writer, to hear speakers.
Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.
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.
The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
I just want to write books or give talks which, if I were in the audience or I were the reader, I would appreciate.
And as soon as the Internet hit and people started having their own web sites, I realized that people who did what I did, our positions were being threatened because, as journalists, we were the conduits between the celebrities and the public.
My parents were decent, aspirant first-generation middle class. They read 'Reader's Digest', listened to classical music; my grandparents had a bust of Stalin on the mantelpiece. The kids of that generation were terrified of being below par, class-wise.
Go back to the Bible, the Old Testament. I mean there were people who we would call intelectuals, there, they were called prophets, but they were basically intelectuals: they were people who were doing critical, geopolitical analysis, talking about the decisions of the king were going to lead to destruction; condemning inmorality, calling for justice for widows and orphans. What we would call dissident intelectuals. Were they nicely treated? No, they were driven into the desert, they were imprisoned, they were denounced. They were intelectuals who conformed.
Sometimes, I like to imagine the perfect reader - the reader who not just understands what I am about, but soaks up every word as if it were written for them. I have been fortunate in that I have got to meet such readers now and again.
When I was super famous, there was definitely a distinction between how one was treated if they were on TV and how one was treated if they were on film. I don't know that that distinction exists as much now.
The digital world has allowed me a connection with my reader that I'd never had before. I didn't meet the people who read my material. The fan letters were mostly answered by professional people that'd done them for a living. And I didn't have any daily connection with their response to my work. I didn't have a relationship with my audience. And every artist should have it.
If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.
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