I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost - not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions.
If I'm doing something in fashion, I will try to respect the 'laws' of the business, but I will try to keep my integrity and my respect for the designers and for my readers.
When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It's not my business whether people like or dislike it.
I have long felt that it is readers and viewers of conservative media who could benefit from a more balanced discussion of what is at stake in our policy and the actions of our government.
Each week, I post a video about some 'Pigeon of Discontent' raised by a reader. Because, as much as we try to find the 'Bluebird of Happiness,' we're also plagued by those small but pesky 'Pigeons of Discontent.'
With humor, it's so subjective that trying to think of what the ideal reader would think would drive you crazy.
Libraries have had a long history of dealing with authoritarian organizations demanding reader records - who's read what - and this has led to people being rounded up and killed.
A key goal for an author of history is to persuade his or her readers to forget what they know and to relive the world as it unfolded for characters of the time - with outcomes uncertain.
'A Princess of Mars' may not have exerted the same colossal pull that Tarzan had on the global imagination, but its influence on generations of readers cannot be underestimated.
I mean, my dad's a television producer, and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.
I'd always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.
But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living.
I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.
I think that's a hallmark of a really good story that it has readers that it speaks to more than others.
A good writer can set a thriller anywhere and make it convincing: the trick is to evoke the setting in such a way that it highlights the crime or unsettles the reader.
I love writing for young adults because they are such a wonderful audience, they are good readers, and they care about the books they read.
I'll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.
That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
I never want readers to be comfortable, to feel like we're in a comedy or a drama. Life is never just one of those things. Life is a balance of all those things.
