Jack Gantos Quotes

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.

I think myself that, rather like books, music is meant to enter into the brain, well via your ears rather than your eyes but, it's - I think a lot more should be left to the imagination.

When I read books, I actually really love imagining whomever I want to in the character's role. I get such vivid pictures on my own that that is a big part of the experience for me.

The theater of the mind is impossible to compete with, and I like the idea that with a few suggestions, each reader forms in his or her own mind what a character or a place looks like.

When I get a beautifully written piece of material, I immediately start imagining how I would interpret it. I love just daydreaming about it for months, breaking it down, seeing where I can spin something. How I can turn this into the most fun ride for the audience that I can make it? That's my job.

I see myself as a storyteller. So, when I read something, I see the story, and I see it on screen, in my head, in a certain way. I always want to see it and see me in it.

The moment that you start to read a script, you're watching the movie in your mind, and that's the one moment that you have. Then, you go off to make the movie and you become so lost in it.

The book is a film that takes place in the mind of the reader. That's why we go to movies and say, "Oh, the book is better."

Radio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them.

When you're reading something, your imagination goes and you see it in your mind. Sometimes my instincts with that are right, and sometimes they're wrong.

I can't read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.

You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.

I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books, I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it.

Architects work in two ways. One is to respond precisely to a client's needs or demands. Another is to look at what the client asks and reinterpret it.

With any kind of sci-fi, the imagination continues, and the world exists, and you create that in your own mind, and it lives in you.

The experience of reading a book is always unique. I believe that you render a version of the story, when you read a book, in a way that is unique and special to each person who reads it.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

Every time I read a script, I see the movie in my head, and I try to see the best movie in my head because everybody interprets the movie differently.

It's funny, because what happens to me when I read a script, when something grabs hold of me, I start getting these flashes of people or places or things or images.

When people are reading a book, it's a personal thing. They're reading it; it's in their own mind; it's in their own personal space when they're reading it.

I don't tend to cast roles in my head because I spend so much time with these characters and the drawings that they're complete in themselves, you know what I mean?

Well, I'll say I have an incredible ability to fantasize - I really do. I don't have to have things tangible to be able to see them, and therefore I enjoy so many things, because they're in my mind.

The images from the book you make in your head are always going to be the best images.

As long as they're making beloved books into movies, people are going to be like, 'That's not my mental image of them.' It takes that moment for it to click and become their mental image.

I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination.