How do people feel about those little quotes at the top of chapters?

I love them. They are like condiments or appetizers, and often lead me to books or poems I didn't know of.

What I don't like is if some juicy bit is quoted somewhere and I can't find the source. I always want to know who wrote it. So, if yours are made up bits from your world's literature, I would want to know that!

I generally like them, but I'll skim over them if they get long. They're easy to skip if you aren't into that.

I've got single words with definitions and etymologies as chapter titles. It, uh, makes more sense in context.

I like them but only if it has a connection with the chapter. I also don't like them to be too long because it does distract from the main story.

My first book, I opened every chapter with a quote. Not a made up one, an actual quote from real people. A lot of readers commented that they loved the quotes and on the book's Amazon page, a lot of people list the quotes as memorable parts of the book.
I never did it again though, because to be brutally honest, it was EXHAUSTING. Finding the exact quote that matched the mood of the chapter and then making sure I hadn't already used it was taking up hours of research that I could have used for something more productive.

I love them. They're fun. And really, if a reader doesn't like them, they aren't difficult to skip.

If they're short, and they add something to the story, they can be fun. (Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy comes to mind; the chapter-starting quotes build to something quite interesting by the end of the book. Tad Williams also effectively filled out his near-future world with them in his Otherworld quartet.)

If they're pointless, rambling, and/or spoiler-ridden, they read like an author trying to be Profound and failing... or an author so in love with their story and their words that they couldn't resist tacking in more. (I read one book in particular where the chapter-starting quotes were excerpts from writings by the characters, about themselves - quotes that served no purpose except to tell me that none of the characters would die before they got around to writing said quotes, evidently long after the events of the book. Entirely forgettable, sometimes annoying fluff.)

I've read both kinds. When they work, they work, but when they don't, they really, really don't. As a writer, I'd only attempt adding chapter quotes if I was 100% certain they'd enhance, rather than detract from, the story... and if there was information that simply could not be worked into the text.

A slight variation on this is news soundbites. Some novels will quote from some news source as a way of letting the reader know what's happening off-screen, so to speak. I've never seen it not work, although I guess you could screw it up.

Brightdreamer said:

If they're short, and they add something to the story, they can be fun. (Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy comes to mind; the chapter-starting quotes build to something quite interesting by the end of the book.

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That's what I thought of, too. In the Mistborn trilogy, they definitely add something to the telling of the story.

I love epigraphs.

I'll give them a try. They're like books themselves. Sometimes I love them, sometimes I'm bored, sometimes I ask "why god, why?" As long as they're interesting and relevant (or failing that, at least fun) I don't have an issue.

I love them. I wish to read the entirety of Baron Bodissey's Life, even tho it's entirely fictional.

Reziac said:

I love them. I wish to read the entirety of Baron Bodissey's Life, even tho it's entirely fictional.

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Right?

The first time I encountered those, it was in Frank Herbert's Dune, which I tried to read for the first time when I was 12. The book was confusing enough so I've learned to tune them out. At least until National Lampoon's parody Doon came out.

I like them and I'm doing it for my current ms. I made mine up and they're more like little poems. But mine do have a point and do foreshadow and are connected to the story, all the reader needs to be is pay attention. But if my future agent doesn't like them, guess they'll have to go.

I like them, but only if they fit the story directly with your own poem. Not a quote from like another famous author.

I like them and use them in my fantasy project. Some are plot-relevant, some will be and some are just for flavour, but I keep them all short.

How do quotes fit in with POV?

If the book is a first person or 3rd limited POV, should the character be familiar with the quote before it can be considered?

Or can it be anything?

I'm pretty neutral about them. I'll admit I don't always read them, unless they're really intriguing or highly relevant to the story. But they're not deal breakers either. I suppose at their worse they step outside the story, and this can make it feel more like a history or retelling than something that's happening to the pov characters here and now. But that depends a lot on the tone and style, and of course on the nature of the quotes themselves.

The only ones I really enjoyed were in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series since they usually gave me a good chuckle. Other than that they don't do much for me personally

Personally, I'm neutral on them. Though when done well, they do add something. Often it seems 3-4 of them are really good, and then a number are filler that don't really add much. Like Rik said, to make it work throughout the book the writer needs to spend a lot of effort to really find good, applicable quotations that will tie into the story. (On that note, i'm about halfway through the book Rikk mentioned, and they quotes DO add something nice, but in my experience, that's the exception more than the rule).