He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers - and spirit itself will stink.
For me, as a writer, I desperately want to be read. I'm very conscious of readers as I'm writing. I think, 'If you write for yourself, then why don't you just keep it under the bed,' so I definitely write for other people.
I do hope to bring Jane Whitefield back before too long.
If you care about who I want to write about, I'll write about the people you want to read about.
It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.
I'm not working on the Great American Novel. All I am doing, I hope, is entertaining readers.
I don't know if my work is a concerted effort to make kids sad!
Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.
When I started writing 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid,' I was trying to write the type of book you might enjoy, put back on your shelf, and rediscover a few years later. I hope that the book finds its way into the bathroom of every kid in America.
It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.
I've often said the reader knows every bit as much about Thorne as I do. When I created him for 'Sleepyhead,' I was determined he should be a character who would develop, book by book, change and grow as we all do, and who - crucially - would be unpredictable.
In some sense, there is no such thing as writing for children.
Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer.
I was not trying to write some sort of serious meditation on war and peace. 'The Grace of Kings' is meant to be a fun book. It's meant to be an epic fantasy.
I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.
I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently.
I hope that 'House of Suns' functions as an independent novel.
Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.' And then there are the letters from adults who say, 'This is such a good book; why did you write it for teens?'
Sometimes the reader will decide something else than the author's intent; this is certainly true of attempts to empirically decipher reality.
I think what makes good children's books is putting the same care and effort into it as if I was writing for adults. I don't write anything - put anything in my books - that I'd be embarrassed to put in an adult book.
When I write, I have a sort of secret kinship of readers in all countries who don't know each other but each of whom, when they read my book, feels at home in it. So I write for those readers. It's almost a sense of writing for a specific person, but it's a specific person who I don't know.
When I wrote 'Marley & Me,' I had a clear audience in mind. And it did not include children. I wrote my book for adults and assumed only adults, and possibly teenagers, would be drawn to it.
There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.
I would like my book to give people insight to the war before and after, but I don't think anyone could read my book and suddenly make up her mind about the war. I want to write for everybody.
With the 'Old Kingdom' trilogy, at least half the readers were older adults rather than younger adults. I wrote them for myself with no particular audience in mind.
