As a reader, I don't feel a story has an obligation to make me happy. I want stories to show me a bigger world than the one I know.
I think fatalism and redemption are themes that help a reader organize and eventually "own" a story or character. Writing them, I just want them to be real, and in reality I don't think events are thematic until in retrospect, if ever.
I think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that the writer is able to dramatise that private world.
Don't watch" the redheaded mind reader whispered. I closed my eyes.
Gutenberg made everybody a reader. Xerox makes everybody a publisher.
Guerrilla ontology The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?
Asymmetric balance creates greater reader interest. Pleasure derived from observing asymmetrical arrangements lies partly in overcoming resistances, which, consciously or not, the spectator adjusts in his own mind.
If you want to really deeply touch the viewer or the reader, the theater might be the most powerful way to do it.
At the end of our conversation she (Martha Stout) turned to address you, the reader. She said if you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of those traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one.