A Quote by Charles Baxter
When readers don't like the book, it's usually because they feel that romantic love is pass or somehow needs more irony.
Related Quotes
Book love is something like romantic love. When we are reading a really great book, burdens feel lighter, cares seem smaller, and commonplaces are suddenly delightful. You become your best optimistic self. Like romantic love, book love fills you with a certain warmth and completeness. The world holds promise.
Book love is something like romantic love. When we are reading a really great book, burdens feel lighter, cares seem smaller.
I feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.
I've had people say very dismissive things about my books, but I also feel like I probably have more readers because I'm a woman. I mean, more readers are women and more people who buy books are women, so I don't feel like it's a total disadvantage to be a female writer.
Some writing is a really nice solitary process, in a way, because you can be a little self-conscious around other people. If it's just you, and you're at your favorite piano, or whatever instrument, and you feel comfortable, then somehow, I always feel like it's opening a door and letting whatever is to pass through pass.
I don't think you ever outgrow your love for things that are bigger than life and more colorful than the average life. And somehow I feel that these comic book stories are like fairy tales for older people, because they have the same qualities.
I do feel like guys feel pressure to be funny with me, which is kind of annoying. It's a turn-off if someone's trying hard to be funny because it feels like they're auditioning for a comedy job or something. It doesn't feel romantic to me. I get so much comedy from my life that, from a guy, I'm more looking for something sweet or romantic.
I love dealing with drama. I'm drawn to the painful side of storytelling, more so. I feel like that's where you get the most honesty from. My laughter comes from irony. You laugh at my pain. I can't look for the laugh 'cause I'll fall flat on my face. I like the type of laughter that comes from irony like, "Of course, it's sunny today when I wore a mink coat!" I'm that guy. I was raised on Benny Hill and The Odd Couple and The Honeymooners.
I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that.
If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books. The book needs you.
It's because of libraries that books like mine get recommended to book clubs and avid readers, who in turn pass them onto others looking to be whisked away from the world for a little while...and perhaps to learn a bit about themselves in the process.
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.
The one that I really call love is when I feel like everything's okay. That state of, it's all right here. I spent most of my adult life looking for romantic love. I've been in therapy since '87. What I learned was, that connection that I was looking for that I thought was really romantic love, my therapist literally said, "Well, when you feel that next, you probably shouldn't go towards that for a partner."
He was already looking at their relationship through the lens of the past tense. It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go? Perhaps real love was familial, somehow, linked to blood, since love for children did not die as romantic love did.
I definitely feel like when I write a book it's not my job to police or guide the readers. The book and the characters don't belong to me anymore. If that makes sense.
Books are just dead words on paper and it is the readers who bring the stories alive. Previously, writers wrote a book and sent it out into the world. A couple of months after publication letters from readers might arrive. And, leaving aside the professional reviews, it is really the reader's opinions that the writer needs. They vote for a book - and a writer - with their hard earned cash every time they go into a bookstore (or online - that's my age showing!) and buy a book.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist