Avi Quotes

The best writing is not about the writer, the best writing is absolutely not about the writer, it's about us, it's about the reader.

There are many people who say, 'I write for myself.' I think that if you write and publish, then you write for your readers, not just for yourself. Many writers say that they write to be loved. I place myself among those writers.

Whenever I write, I'm always thinking of the reader.

You write for two people, yourself and your audience, who are usually better educated and at least as smart.

I never wrote my books especially for children.

I write to be read. I'm quite direct about that. I'm not writing to thrill colleagues or to impress the professors at the University of Iowa; that's not my goal.

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

The act of writing should not be accompanied by the sense of an audience, someone peering over your shoulder, but in nonfiction I think it’s almost imperative that you identify an audience so you can confirm or challenge or undermine whatever ideas or prejudices they might have about your subject.

Normally writers do not talk much,because they are saving their conversations for the readers of their book- those invisible listeners with whom we wish to strike a sympathetic chord.

There was a time before I felt I was a real writer, when I was a yarn spinner and I just wanted to tell story until it was over. But then there came a time where I was like, 'No, I want to understand something through writing this that I might have not understood before. I want people to come away with something to think about.'

I think once you write fiction, you put it out, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, some of which are going to be shocking to the writer.

And I've always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people.

I wrote for so many years in a bubble, the way everyone does, and there were large swaths of time where you think you're doing this for nothing. An audience is crucial, a back and forth with the invisible readers.

I write to relieve an intellectual itch. I stumble across a hitherto neglected set of events, transformations, characters, or source materials from the past, and they nag at me until I make sense of them in words. But I also write to seduce and to make my readers think.

I'm getting a lot of mail from readers, and I'd say 90% seem to be from adults, which amazes me. But then again, I can only write what I imagine I'd like to read, and I'm an adult, so maybe it's not so surprising after all.

I often use nameless places in my work as a way of allowing the readers to create more of the novel and to make it potentially about their experiences, what they know, a city that they have perhaps seen on television.

When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!

While I admire writers who are able to write with a vitality based on order and action, I work in a different vein. I often feel that if I can get the language just right, the language hypnotizes the reader.

In music, you can use metaphors with ease - if a person doesn't understand the parable, they can still enjoy the melody of the music. If, however, a person reads a book and misses the meaning of its metaphors, this will be extremely disheartening for both the reader as well as the author.

Fiction needs writers and readers, and writers should cultivate both.

I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that it enables the readers' creativity and interaction with the book.

If we lose sight of the fact that writing is entertainment, then writing is doomed.

People never read my books for the quality of the documentary value.

If I don't know who I'm writing for, I make it up and pick somebody I'm writing for. That's really the only way to do it.

My writing could be the most beautiful or important piece of prose, but it means nothing if it's boring, if people aren't listening or reading. I think transporting someone, putting them in a story for a few hours, taking them out of their worlds, is what I always strive to do.