A Quote by Ann Patchett

I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody. — © Ann Patchett
I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.
I tend to think that the onus is on the writer to engage the reader, that the reader should not be expected to need the writer, that the writer has to prove it. All that stuff might add up to a kind of fun in the work. I like things that are about interesting subjects, which sounds self-evident.
I dislike that premise implies that a fiction writer is incapable of dreaming up stories that can bring readers to tears, that if you are lucky enough to be living a pretty sedate life ,as I am, you've got nothing worthy of writing about, that you're incapable of making a reader's gut wrench.Frankly, that's what makes readers nervous, the sorcery of you or me or any good fiction writer making up characters who feel like real people, of telling a story that feels true but isn't.
As a reader, when the writer gets sentimental, you drift, because there's something fishy going on there. You recognize a moment that's largely about the writer and the writer's own need to believe in something that might not in fact exist. As a reader, you think, 'Where did the story go? Where did the person I'm reading about go?'
If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.
It's the writer's job to disarm the reader of his logic, to just make the reader feel.
We must be forewarned that only rarely does a text easily lend itself to the reader's curiosity... the reading of a text is a transaction between the reader and the text, which mediates the encounter between the reader and writer. It is a composition between the reader and the writer in which the reader "rewrites" the text making a determined effort not to betray the author's spirit.
I need some space." "Because of my past?" "No, because of mine. When I'm around you I feel like I'm falling. I need to stop before I smash into the ground." "Are you always so honest?" "No. Mostly I'm a liar like you.
I'm a writer because I love reading. I love the conversation between a reader and a writer, and that it all takes place in a book-sort of a neutral ground. A writer puts down the words, and a reader interprets the words, and every reader will read a book differently. I love that.
I have a total responsibility to the reader. The reader has to trust me and never feel betrayed. There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers. And it's appropriate, because the writer is getting paid and the reader isn't.
A writer often wants to change a reader’s perception about the world, which is a political act. But we have to work through character, so helping the reader to feel close to fictional characters is the gate through which we have to usher the reader.
I think that reading is always active. As a writer, you can only go so far; the reader meets you halfway, bringing his or her own experience to bear on everything you've written. What I mean is that it is not only the writer's memory that filters experience, but the reader's as well.
If the audience is responding very well to comedians that are hacks, and I don't do well, I don't feel as bad, because I feel like their taste is different than mine. They're laughing at somebody I would never laugh at, so that makes it okay, because obviously our tastes are not in the same place. And comedy is subjective, so I feel like maybe the failure wasn't all mine. I don't think they ever would have really enjoyed me. So sometimes that's a little easier, but not much.
It is easier for the reader to judge, by a thousand times, than for the writer to invent. The writer must summon his Idea out of nowhere, and his characters out of nothing, and catch words as they fly, and nail them to the page. The reader has something to go by and somewhere to start from, given to him freely and with great generosity by the writer. And still the reader feels free to find fault.
I have always been immersed in a world filled with words, earlier as a reader and now, finally, as both a reader and a writer.
Before you can become a writer, you have to be a reader, and a reader of everything, at that. To the best of my recollection, I became a reader at the age of 10 and have never stopped. Like many authors, I read all sorts of books all the time, and it is amazing how the mind fills up.
You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to be able to freely observe the world. That's the way I like to move through the world; I don't need to be the focus of attention. If I am, it impairs my ability to write and to do what I do.
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