David Ogilvy Quotes

You know, you have to do homework. You listen to who they are, what they do. I also compare it to designing clothes for people. If somebody brings in Tilda Swinton, you're not going to give her the same dress you'd give Gabourey Sidibe. Everybody looks different in a different line, a different color. The same thing with the way people speak.

I have no intention of becoming a shorthand author.

One thing I can say right off the bat is that creating great editorial is a huge challenge, and you can't help but go through the process and not appreciate how valuable this skill is, and how much I admire the people who do this every day.

does one ever say the same thing in the same way to two different people?

If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.

Knowing that a story needs to be told is a great motivator, even if telling a given story comes at a price. Writing Hunger has been the most difficult writing of my life, and it's the rawest and perhaps most necessary. We'll see how people take it. I always strive to write beyond personal catharsis because though I write first and foremost for myself, I do recognize that I need to look outward as much if not more than I look inward, so the reader has something with which they can engage.

I guess I think I'm writing for people who are smarter than I am, because then I'll be doing something that's worth their time. I'd be very afraid to write from a position where I consciously thought I was smarter than most of my readers.

The new contract between writers and readers is one I'm prepared to sign up to. I've met some fascinating people at events and online. Down with the isolation of writers I say! And long live Twitter.

Every genuinely literary style, from the high authorial voice to Foster Wallace and his footnotes-within-footnotes, requires the reader to see the world from somewhere in particular, or from many places. So every novelist's literary style is nothing less than an ethical strategy - it's always an attempt to get the reader to care about people who are not the same as he or she is.

You can't write something actively trying to please everyone - you're going to end up with watery soup that way. You just have to write stories you would want to read and hope that people like them.

The idea of being all things to all people is a thing of the past.

When people write to me with stories, they are never ones that work for me. There's something mysterious about which ones catch you.

I write very tightly, and my big fear is boring people. I want them to read quickly, stopped in their tracks. I resist indulging myself.

Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.

As we talk about devices, you should never forget that behind every one there is a person - a customer. It“s not the Internet of Things, but the Internet of People - of customers. We are moving to one-to-one relationships.

people never write calmly but when they write indifferently.

Most people write the same sentence over and over again. The same number of words-say, 8-10, or 10-12. The same sentence structure. Try to become stretchy-if you generally write 8 words, throw a 20 word sentence in there, and a few three-word shorties. If you're generally a 20 word writer, make sure you throw in some threes, fivers and sevens, just to keep the reader from going crosseyed.

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting.

Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don't want to read.

People I admire have two qualities: a kind of simplicity, and generosity of spirit. It seems to me that the more impressive people are in what they have done, the simpler they tend to be in how they talk to you, or in what they say or write.

I learned to write by listening to people talk. I still feel that the best of my writing comes from having heard rather than having read.

I treat people who write me the way my friends and I all treat each other when we go to each other for advice, which is sometimes with supreme cruelty. I think that's what helps the advice sink in. If somebody comes at you with both barrels, the first shot opens your head, and the second shot allows the advice to get lodged inside.

I am of the generation of writers who can get instant feedback from readers within hours of publication. The fan forum is extraordinary - readers from all over the world coming together to discuss, argue and debate scenes and characters from a novel. They add a layer to the story that I cannot write and yes, I will participate in that conversation and answer questions. After all, they are the people I'm writing for and their enthusiasm and questions really pushes me to raise the bar.

In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.