I write because something inner and unconscious forces me to. That is the first compulsion. The second is one of ethical and moral duty. I feel responsible to tell stories that inspire readers to consider more deeply who they are.
Novelists may be able to seek advice from readers and editors, but in the end, it is up to them to get the book right.
That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left--something dim and inaccurate--but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.
A reader is entitled to believe what he or she believes is consonant with the facts of the book. It is not unusual that readers take away something that is spiritually at variance from what I myself experienced. That's not to say readers make up the book they want. We all have to agree on the facts. But readers bring their histories and all sets of longings. A book will pluck the strings of those longings differently among different readers.
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
The literature Nobel laureate of this year has said that an author can do anything as long as his readers believe him. A scientist cannot do anything that is not checked and rechecked by scientists of this network before it is accepted.
An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.
I think kids are incredibly savvy readers. I think we should give them all the credit in the world. They want to know the truth.
Readers themselves, I think, contribute to a book. They add their own imaginations, and it is as though the writer only gave them something to work on, and they did the rest.
Of all the nations in the Western world, the United States, with the most money and the most time, has the fewest readers of books per capita. This is an incalculable loss. This, too, is one of the few civilized nations in the world which is unable to support a single magazine devoted solely to books.
I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.
Ive gotten to know a number of readers from being online, and really treasure the time Ive spent with them.
God is a writer and we are both the heroes and the readers.
We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.
Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.
The one thing I wished for my children is that they'd be readers.
What I would not like is to be ignored. I write from the heart. I don't write for me. I write for my readers.