George Bernard Shaw Quotes

Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight.

But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

Man’s writing has but one true sense, which is that which the Author meant when he writ it.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

Meaning lies as much in the mind of the reader as in the Haiku.

Most critics don't realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends; and so, with some pre-ordained right to pontificate they take on the responsibility of decoding the book and risk making terrible fools of themselves.

When I first moved up to San Francisco to write Where The Wild Things Are, I had a couple moments where I talked to somebody, and they're like, "Oh, I love that book. I love this part of it," or, "This is what it means to me." And it's like, "Well, I don't know. I guess that's not what I'm making the movie about." But very early on, I don't know, we sort of let go of that fear.

You can't expect that, after a poor fellow has written a book, he should also understand it.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.

I love it when people want to interpret my books.

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.

This is a much more fitting interpretation of the book than its modern interpretation.

However, intention needn't enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don't see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others.

I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.

Every reader re-creates a novel - in their own imagination, anyway. It's only entirely the writer's when nobody else has read it.

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 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.

People would much rather argue their own visions and conceptions about a book than engage in a dialogue with the author, because the author could always trump you with, 'I wrote it.'

Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)

I think people feel very comfortable reviewing the idea of me, as opposed to what I've actually written. Most of the time, when people write about one of my books, they're really just writing about what they think I may or may not represent, as sort of this abstract entity. Is that unfair? Not really. If I put myself in this position where I'm going to kind of weave elements of memoir into almost everything, well, I suppose that's going to happen.

Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and the meaning of a poem takes place in the negotiation between the poet, the poem and the reader.

A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.

A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.

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.