“The book is finished by the reader. A good novel should invite the reader in and let the reader participate in the creative experience and bring their own life experiences to it, interpret with their own individual life experiences. Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.” WayShouldBookDifferentIndividualNovelCreativeReaderFinishedDifferent WaysInvitesLife ExperienceIndividual Life Author:Alan Lightman
“My readers often say to me, 'If we lived next door to each other, we'd be best friends.' That is precisely what I wanted to say to smart, funny, self-effacing Ellen McCarthy after I finished reading The Real Thing. I loved every lesson laid out in a book that wouldn't dare to call itself a field guide to marriage but amounts to as much on every page. This is a deeply useful little book.” IfsLittlesBookRealSelfWantedReadingNextDoorsFieldsReaderAmountLessonsPagesSmartDareFinishedGuidesReal Things Author:Kelly Corrigan
“The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.” ThinkingMenShouldHumansCharacterHandsAbleTogetherPoetryImaginationSituationPoetFoolReaderDemandPhilosophicalPhilosopherFinishedPermitCapabilitySageBeholderMental Power Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
“Best to say that once a poem is finished I trust it to make its way, and I trust readers will find their way to it and through it, if the thing has got itself rightly expressed.” IfsWayReaderFinished Author:Seamus Heaney