Dennis Lehane Quotes

Don't write your books for people who won't like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write, and don't try to please readers who like something different.

You'll go mad trying to figure out what people want. I don't bother. I write the stories I want to read.

If I like it, it's gonna be on my album. You can't please everyone.

You can't be trying to make a film that pleases all people, you know, so it's not a concern of mine.

For me, I'm not trying to be the flavor for everybody. But I'm just proud when people I respect or people that I want to be my fans are my fans.

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.

If you write for the critics, only the critics will read you.

If the stuff you're writing is not for yourself, it won't work.

It's always disappointing when people decide for one reason or another that they don't like your work anymore, but you can't try to please people, because then you're just going to be doing - you'll never live it down, y'know it'll always be dogging you around - you might be being a fake about the whole thing.

Dear though the reader might be, I'd be silly to cater to what the reader wanted.

I think the good thing about Macklemore is that he is very precise about what he gets involved in. As you can tell, he's very passionate about what he puts his name on, because he talks about things people don't usually talk about, and his concepts are very, very passionate.

You know, we have our own audience, and it's not like - they just know we're not going to do certain things.

First and foremost, you have to make the movie for yourself. And that's not to say, to hell with everyone else, but what else have you got to go on but your own taste and judgment?

I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.

All I can do is make good music and make it for the fans, not for anybody else.

I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.

I've found that if you just try to make the film you want, you'll find the right audience. If you try to please everyone, you're going to make really boring films.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with.

Rather than trying to create an audience, just try and create music that feels good to you.

Every time you do something, people are going to like it, people are going to hate it. You tend to make the movies on the basis you are making them for the people who are going to like them and not worrying too much about people who don't like them.

When you write a song, you don't ask if it's good or not, or if it's gonna sell. When you write a song, you ask whether you've reached deep inside your heart and whether it's honest.

Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.

It's just a campy blast. I just want to do as little as I can and make it good, and try not to sell out. I'm sure I will, but I'm just trying to postpone it.

I feel that if you made your writing too contrived to meet the market, it wouldn't be any good.