Raymond E. Feist Quotes

When they write a bad review, and you agree with it, that's the worst feeling. When you know you've done what you wanted and the best you could and you love the outcome, then you look at everything differently. Not everyone's going to love everything you do.

I have only one reader - me. I'm the average reader. If I like it, that's all I worry about.

I don't put any pressure on myself in terms of what people or fans do or don't want. It really just doesn't occur to me. I honestly just want to make the films I want to see as a fan. The film will survive or fail in my mind by how much I like it. Having said that, everyone wants their films to do well and to be well-received.

I've made records that everyone has hated and I've loved, and made records that everyone has loved and I've deemed, at best, mediocre.

You can only make the best thing you can make, and if it offends purists, or angers certain critics, you can only have done your best.

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

I think about the audience in the sense that I serve as my own audience. I have to please myself the way, if I saw the movie in a theater, I would be pleased. Do I think about catering to an audience? No.

I don't pay much attention to the press. My films always get good reviews and bad reviews. I just try to make the best film I can.

I do not really write for children: I write only for me and for the few people I hope to please, and I write for the story.

Every year, the Giller jury is different. You write the best book you can and throw it out there.

Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.

My movies just kind of sneak up on you. I don't have to worry too much about what everybody is going to say. Anyway, I really don't pay attention to what the world says about my movies. I just care about what my buddies think.

As we began working toward the finale of 'Lost,' I knew there was no possible ending that was going to be universally loved, and I accepted that. We ended the story the way we wanted it to end, and we stand by it. On my Twitter feed, I still get ten to fifteen positive comments for every negative one.

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.

I never want to be in a position where I have to defend my material. It's too subjective. It's for other people to defend or not defend.

I never really think about what people are going to think of the movie afterwards. Or what people are going to call me. I just want to make a great project, and my focus is really all on that. And then I really don't read reviews. Like, you know, go on comment boards or anything.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

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.

It's funny, I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

I am so anti-people's opinions when I'm making a record, but when it's finished and I put it out there, I hope somebody likes it.

My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.

I've written the best work I know how. And I'm appreciative of the people who read it and care about the work - and that's pretty much the end of that.

I don't write anything if I'm not agreeable and liking it. I'm not one of these slavers who wads up paper. It comes or it doesn't.