Patrick Rothfuss Quotes

I feel humor is important for those two reasons: that it is a little bit of refreshment like music, and that women have told me over the years that it is very, very important to them.

Humor is necessary - it allows the reader to come up for air before dunking them under again. I need humor and I need it on the page to keep the reader going.

We need time to relax and enjoy ourselves too, no matter how dark the story. The occasional humorous moment helps with that. That's one of the things that Joss Whedon excels at in his storytelling.

The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.

It's a very important skill set for an actor to be able to bring the humor into any moment, whether you're doing drama or comedy.

There are moments of levity. I feel like any great drama has moments of levity, or else it just becomes too hard to watch. 45 minutes of just pain and suffering is not enjoyable. We're trying to entertain people.

I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together. If you told a story that was all darkness, it wouldn't be real.

I've always felt that no one understands why some books of non-fiction endure and some don't, because there's not much understanding among many non-fiction writers that the narrative is terribly important.

What they frequently want to do with a movie is, they want to cut out the valleys and just show the peaks. And valleys are important; the valleys make the peaks stand out.

There's an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.

It's been really important to me to create moments where there's a breath or moments where there's a laugh or moments where there's real life that's allowed to seep in through the cracks of whatever melodrama is happening, because that's what does happen in life.

I naturally think in terms of comedy whenever I see anything because tragedy is so close to comedy, so I like to add the tragedy to the comedy or a little bit of comedy to the tragedy in order to make them both feel more real to me.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

Humor is a very big part of life, and if you exclude humor from your book, you're not capturing a very important part of human experience.

To me, the solidarity of readers is far more important than the solidarity of writers, particularly since readers in fact find ways to connect over a book or books, whatever they may be.

The most important part of a story is the ending. No one reads a book to get to the middle.

The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation.

I actually pay careful attention to that sort of thing - infusing humor into my films - because that's how important I think humor is.

Within any drama in anyone's life, there's always a way to find the humor in it. Without humor no one cares about whatever drama is going on.

Readers themselves, I think, contribute to a book. They add their own imaginations, and it is as though the writer only gave them something to work on, and they did the rest.

A book can just be a description of a stick being snapped in half. If the reader is brought to feel the plight of the stick, well, you can imagine what that would be like.

The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book.

Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

I read the bible often, not just to prepare for "Noah". I believe it is a very important book.

The novelist now usurps the chair of the educator, the pulpit of the preacher, the columns of the journalist. Yet his original purpose of entertaining may have been his highest purpose. (introduction to Gladiator, Book League Monthly, 1930)