Ruth Ozeki Quotes

It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected.

Things change and work changes. Right now I like the idea of enveloping a space and getting messages across that connect to the world in ways that seem familiar but are different.

I write for the same reason I read: to find out what's going to happen.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

If after you read something, you connect with it, you want to do it.

When I'm an audience member I do not want to go and see something that I already know, I want to see something that I don't know. I want to be surprised and stimulated to think about something. I want the magic. I want to be in a situation of uncertainty; that's what excites me.

I loved stories as a kid, both being read to me and enjoying on my own. All these stories inspired my imagination, and that's what I have always aimed at doing for my readers: ignite their imaginations.

I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every 'Harry Potter' book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way.

One thing changes every evening: It's the audience, and I'm working my magic. I'm always learning from it.

The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone.

I meet people, and we can get past small talk pretty quickly if they've read my books. It's a great shortcut.

People don't care about books. They care about ideas.

Paranormal fiction offers authors - and readers - the chance to answer the question, 'What if?' All the different ways that question can be answered make for extremely entertaining reading.

The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.

You can't write an image, a metaphor, a story, a phrase, without leaning a little further into the shared world, without recognizing that your supposed solitude is at every point of its perimeter touching some other.

People love stories. They need stories.

I have never forgotten the almost mystical power over an audience a storyteller has, when the story is deep and links you.

All my life, books have felt alive; some more so than people, or rather, some people. Alive - this has to do with me, I know, and not the books - in a way that some people aren't. Alive as teachers, alive as minds, alive as imaginative triggers.

Music is so intimate and so personal that when you can find somebody that feels the same way about it that you do, it's magic. It can be. It really can be.

My first memory of the Harry Potter series was my little brother just falling into those books and not resurfacing until he was done. That J.K. Rowling got an entire generation reading is extraordinary - I'm amazed, thrilled, and proud to now be portraying one of that phenomenal writer's characters.

With a book, there's no volume to turn up. You're very naked with a book.

That's what I love about acting and love and drama and art: that humanness we all share.

When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they're feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is.

There are so many fun things that you live that you can write about and people of all ages can connect to.

What I always do is go with the stories that put up the hair on the back of my neck or make me cry or make me laugh.