Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people. I think people's interactions with art are their own, and will be far more interesting and sophisticated than anything that I could come up with.

Everything is personal.

In reality, every reader is, while reading, the reader of his own self.

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

I'm coming 'round to the view that there's only a personal view of the world.

Everybody's entitled to their own experience.

Art is about the 'I' in life not the 'we', about private life rather than public. A public life that doesn't acknowledge the private is a life not worth having.

All my characters are me, in one way or another.

Each reader projects their own version of the experience inside their skull as they go along. It's probably true that no two people read exactly the same book.

No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves.

One of the things I've really come to realise is that the chances of arriving at a universal truth are increased if you remain absolutely faithful to the contingencies of your own experience and the vagaries of your own nature.

When someone starts talking to me about the truth, what I hear is what they're telling me about themselves.

Seeing a play, listening to music - you'll always contextualize it in your own way. Whoever you are, wherever you are; I think that's really important.

I never try to guess what anyone else will take from a movie. Every movie is such a different experience for each and every person. I don't like it when people try telling people what they should take from a movie. You should go see it with fresh eyes and see for themselves.

Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.

I would hope that people, no matter what age, would find something to identify with in my books, pick one up and experience a personal sense of discovery. That's great. But for them, not for me.

Every book is a unique experience.

Nobody understands your life, but you.

I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.

The meaning of everything is the meaning I give it

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself.

We both know that, my friend, but a man's perception soon becomes his reality.

I think everybody reacts to entertainment with a different kind of visceral way, probably mostly based on their own personal experiences.

What I have written is but a fleeting intimation of the outside of what one man sees and may tell about the path he walks. No one shares the secret of a life; no one enters into the heart of the mystery.