Lois Lowry Quotes

A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response.

This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over again in different people's minds. That I might mean one thing as I write, but a reader's experiences will take it somewhere else. That is like a conversation, I think. It is a true connecting up.

A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

The better the book the more room for the reader.

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

The novel that an author writes is often not the novel that the reader reads, and most of the 'messages' in a novel are put there by the reader. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's how literature functions.

The so-called paradoxes of an author, to which a reader takes exception, often exist not in the author's book at all, but rather in the reader's head.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

Books are just dead words on paper and it is the readers who bring the stories alive. Previously, writers wrote a book and sent it out into the world. A couple of months after publication letters from readers might arrive. And, leaving aside the professional reviews, it is really the reader's opinions that the writer needs. They vote for a book - and a writer - with their hard earned cash every time they go into a bookstore (or online - that's my age showing!) and buy a book.

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Confusing the author and the character seems to be a popular and rather unsophisticated reaction to books.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.

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.

You hope that people read your book and say "Yes, this is the way it is or could be." But then you have no way of knowing until the reader reads the book. Actually, the critical response doesn't worry me. I've had very few reviews that have upset me.

A book is completed only when it is finished by a reader.

If the reader enters a kind of immersive experience reading a book, then I have to enter a kind of immersive state to do my best work.

I write short stories. They may appear big in size, but when you consider it, they're four or five novels in one... In return for picking up one of my books, I'm trying to give them value for their money... the goal of writing any book is to create the illusion that what you are reading is reality and you're part of it.

I love getting fan mail. Often, as a writer, you never know what your readers think of a book... you get critical reviews and sales figures, but none of that is the same as knowing you've made a person stay up all night reading, or helped them have a good cry, or really touched their life.