William Kent Krueger Quotes

You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you know and what you experience. And this is undeniable.

You can have opinions, but it doesn't mean they're right.

There's no way to remove the observer - us - from our perceptions of the world.

But I'm not objective when I'm acting.

We all live with blinders on. They come with having a personal vantage point.

It is impossible for human beings not to view something subjectively.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

As a writer, one is always a little blind to what one writes.

To be a good biographer, you have to be an empiricist. You know, you have to gather the evidence, you have to keep an open mind, and you have to be objective. A memoirist goes in with all the baggage of a bad biographer.

Perfect objectivity is always impossible, no matter who writes a person's biography.

You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.

I don't want to interview people for the purpose of developing a world view and pushing that on people.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experience. No one can eliminate prejudices—just recognize them.

We may try to see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can never see them with any eyes except our own.

The same evidence that is convincing to one person may not convince another.

Why does a writer labor over nuance and context if it won't be respected, if a critic insists on ignoring the writing at hand in favor of a more convenient analysis of his or her own particular pet peeves and straw men?

It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias.

What we are able to judge with feeling is very little; the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.

There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgment when used to give an opinion on our own works. It is sound in judging the work of our enemies but not that of our friends, for hate and love are two of the most powerfully motivating factors found among living things.

Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment, too?

History is sympathetic to its authors.

I grew up reading biographies on groups, and I love all that. The thing about biographies, it's the old cliché but it's true - a lot of the time these things are more about the author than they are about the group.

Feedback often tells you more about the person who is giving it than about you.

We always try to interpret things in accordance with what we want and not as they are.

Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the forecast.