Jay Asher Quotes

Each reader has to find her or his own message within a book.

Always leave room for the reader to supply meanings.

I can only know what love is insofar as I can feel it.

The great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself recreates them.

I am sure everyone has had the experience of reading a book and finding it vibrating with aliveness, with colour and immediacy. And then, perhaps some weeks later, reading it again and finding it flat and empty. Well, the book hasn't changed: you have.

A letter is a risky thing; the writer gambles on the reader's frame of mind.

Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him.

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.

To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.

Don't trust anyone who isn't angry.

Somebody insults you and you feel anger. Don't miss this opportunity; try to understand why, why this anger. And don't make it a philosophical thing. Don't go to the library to consult about anger. Anger is happening to you -- it is an experience, a live experience. Focus your whole attention on it and try to understand why it is happening to you. It is not a philosophical problem. No Freud is to be consulted about it. There is no need! It is just foolish to consult somebody else while anger is happening to you. You can touch it. You can taste it. You will be burned by it.

It is feeling that sets a man thinking, and not thought that sets him feeling.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

What is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.

Anyone who says he is not emotional is not getting what he should out of life.

I'm British. I don't really have access to my emotions on a daily basis.

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

Passion makes the best observations and the sorriest conclusions.

A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.

Life without emotions is like an engine without fuel.

I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.

You're not me. You can't feel like I feel." "I can feel." "No you can't. You just choose not to feel or something and everything's fine." "It's not fine. It's just not so bad.

We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.

A modern teacher educates children to value their emotions.

When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are.