A Quote by Whitley Strieber
The truth is, everything ultimately comes down to the relationship between the reader and the writer and the characters. Does or does not a character address moral being in a universal and important way? If it does, then it's literature.
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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.
What does Macbeth want? What does Shakespeare want? What does Othello want? What does James want? What does Arthur Miller want when he wrote? Those things you incorporate and create in the character, and then you step back and you create it. It always must begin with the point of truth within yourself.
[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.
Faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add there is but one road to it.
At the end of the day, I think the only way to do the kind of job a writer does is push everything aside and just ultimately sit down and do the work.
The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.
The analytical writer observes the reader as he is; accordingly, he makes his calculation, sets his machine to make the appropriate effect on him. The synthetic writer constructs and creates his own reader; he does not imagine him as resting and dead, but lively and advancing toward him. He makes that which he had invented gradually take shape before the reader's eyes, or he tempts him to do the inventing for himself. He does not want to make a particular effect on him, but rather enters into a solemn relationship of innermost symphilosophy or sympoetry.
Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers
Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard.
No medium is more limited than any other. It's what a person does with it. We could talk about the differences between music and literature and photography, sure, but it really comes down to what a person does.
The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth.
My idea of teaching literature is just to read great passages aloud or to look at it the way a writer does, which is what I try to do. Which is to say, 'How does this writer do this? How did he order his scenes? Do you notice any pattern to his sentences?'
Arjen does not have to say that he should do the exercises at 100 per cent; he does it anyway. You have to slow him down more. He is unique; he does everything for his job.
Tolerance does not...do anything, embrace anyone, champion any issue. It wipes the notes off the score of life and replaces them with one long bar of rest. It does not attack error, it does not champion truth, it does not hate evil, it does not love good.
Just keep asking questions. Does this job allow me to be myself? Does it make me smarter? Does it open doors? Does it represent a compromise I accept? Does it touch my inner being?
Babies are a nuisance, of course. But so does everything seem to be that is worth while – husbands and books and committees and being loved and everything. We have to choose between barren ease and rich unrest – or rather, one does not choose.
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