Edward St Aubyn Quotes

The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.

I try to avoid describing one interpretation of my books. Of course I have an opinion. I have things I want to say, but I don't ever want to limit anybody, to have them say, 'Oh, he said this, so that's what it's about.' I'm happy people bring their own stuff to it.

It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience).

I like looking at a book and asking myself, 'How do I replicate that experience I just had as a reader?'

I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently.

I love it when people want to interpret my books.

Your intention for a book is never the same as the reception.

Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.

I've never set out to seduce my reader. I don't see him at all clearly.

My job is to form the people, the story, the sentences. Every reader will bring their own life and their own history to the story and shape it accordingly. I guess you can say it's like I am sending them a letter.

I can only try to keep the characters interesting; it's up to the readers to decide whether they're still relevant.

Of course, you can't legislate for how people are going to read.

I love it when my books cause controversy, when people argue violently about the ending.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.

Naturally, the reader has access only to the events I show and the way I show them, but as has been said, there's generally a good deal of ambiguity in that presentation.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

I think that reading is always active. As a writer, you can only go so far; the reader meets you halfway, bringing his or her own experience to bear on everything you've written. What I mean is that it is not only the writer's memory that filters experience, but the reader's as well.

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.

The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story.

I don't put a lot of description in the books because I write books the way I like to read them, and that is I like to build images and be a creative reader, and so I write that way.

I'm an optimistic person, so I like to leave my readers with a sense of hopefulness.

The writer will write in his or her words, but the readers, even when they are not reading you, will take it elsewhere entirely.

In a graphic novel, you have to allow for a certain amount of freedom on the reader's part to experience it how they choose.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.