John Fowles Quotes

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.

I think when you're a fan of a book you do have your own little version of the characters and I hope that some people feel we are the versions they might have imagined.

A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.

I think myself that, rather like books, music is meant to enter into the brain, well via your ears rather than your eyes but, it's - I think a lot more should be left to the imagination.

It's like when you read a book and you know that the words are important, but the images blossoming in your imagination are even more important because it's your mind that allows the words to come to life.

The better the book the more room for the reader.

Readers themselves, I think, contribute to a book. They add their own imaginations, and it is as though the writer only gave them something to work on, and they did the rest.

The more imagination the reader has ... the more he will do for himself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion and never guess that he is himself chiefly making what he enjoys.

A novel is, hopefully, the starting point of a conversation, one in which the author engages readers and asks that they see things from a different point of view than they might otherwise.

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.

I try to avoid describing one interpretation of my books. Of course I have an opinion. I have things I want to say, but I don't ever want to limit anybody, to have them say, 'Oh, he said this, so that's what it's about.' I'm happy people bring their own stuff to it.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

I'm an avid reader myself, and what any one reader accesses at any one time is very powerful and personal to them. Clearly you can't even begin to touch that. A novel is a singular vision, and then a myriad of readers have their own experience of that.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else's words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

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.

The writer will write in his or her words, but the readers, even when they are not reading you, will take it elsewhere entirely.

I see myself as a storyteller. So, when I read something, I see the story, and I see it on screen, in my head, in a certain way. I always want to see it and see me in it.

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.

People should be free to take whatever they want from music and I think that over time I realized that different people always find different things in my songs, which is really good.

If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books. The book needs you.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes, so that it's really left open for a lot of things, even though I remember a specific impression of something I had at the time. I can't say a song is about this or that; in fact, I wouldn't even want to. I just prefer to have people live it anyway they want. Because it's theirs after that. There's nothing I can do about it anymore

What interests me very much as a writer is the ability for writing to have our lives to be occupied so vividly by others. I think that's what we long for as writers.

I think readers are just looking for things that maybe they recognize or can relate to in the books.

The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.