Richard Flanagan Quotes

When I have a book I enjoy, I'm partly in the book. I'm not just observing it.

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.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

The whole point of reading is that the writer is speaking to you, and if you're not listening, you're not going to have any fun reading.

Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.

I'm a writer because I love reading. I love the conversation between a reader and a writer, and that it all takes place in a book-sort of a neutral ground. A writer puts down the words, and a reader interprets the words, and every reader will read a book differently. I love that.

The experience of reading a book is always unique. I believe that you render a version of the story, when you read a book, in a way that is unique and special to each person who reads it.

When I read a character that I really, really love, I know immediately what they look like. It's like I want to 100 percent become that person.

When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.

That's the power of fiction, that it can take the collective and make it personal.

I am a very active audience member. I want to be moved. I want to be confronted. I want to feel.

When I read, I don't need a character to look like me, act like me, or think like me. I don't need to have my heart broken. I don't need to be surprised or amused or challenged, and I don't need to swoon.

I'm not sure plays tell people anything. I think plays include an audience in an experience that is happening in that moment, and that's the specialness. What people take away has almost as much to do with what they bring as what we do.

What I always do is go with the stories that put up the hair on the back of my neck or make me cry or make me laugh.

I felt that 'English Vinglish' was tailor-made for me since I found my character Shashi so relatable. Her simplicity and sensitivity attracted me towards the role.

Find your own way into your story. Find your own way into your game.

Ultimately, I don't think you can be a character who's completely alien or divorced from your own personality. It's probably true of every writer - it's probably true of every filmmaker, every songwriter - that, ultimately, every character you create is a facet of yourself.

Because the beauty of songs, I think, is if you do it right a lot of people can relate to it in their own way and make their own meaning out of things.

The very best design, I feel, is that which resonates so deeply that people can't help but discover something within themselves when they see it.

That's why people read books. You get to have the real conversation, as opposed to the pseudo-conversations we have in everyday life.

I prefer to read into other people's songs what I want to hear in them.

I feel like 'Amelie' is very much an extension of me. She's a contemporary woman who sees the world through her imagination.

The older I get and the more iconic the piece, I believe that it's wise to watch a bit and become inspired and take moments that feel so connected to the story and also connected to me that I feel like I can make a part of my own performance.

We're moved by emotions and characters and stories. We love that.

When there are no lyrics, people can picture what they want. It's a reflection of where they are in their lives. Music becomes a mirror.