Truth was more kindly expressed to not repel the Catholic and skeptical reader.

I defy the most skeptical, even hostile, reader to emerge from a reading unaffected.

This last element was missing, but today you convinced one generally skeptical reader.

A skeptical reader might suspect a spoof if not a hoax.

A skeptical reader might ask, did an elephant paint a bunch of flowers only because it was cued by its trainer?

For example, let me play a skeptical reader.

It felt a bit too much like a discussion between a skeptical reader and Malcolm's publicist, however.

But even the most skeptical reader of his new book, "Secret Historian," will have to admit that the bar is now set high.

As he put it: "Even the cautiously skeptical reader might say: 'He did it once.

Even skeptical readers will also believe, since Knox creates so vivid a realm for him, at once orthodox and iconoclastic, mysterious and translucent.