Ray Bradbury Quotes

I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable.

The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.

This is the beauty of fiction. We may not like these characters, but we inhabit them.

The first job of a storyteller is to make the reader feel the story, to get the reader to live in the skin of the character.

I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.

You know, my point in being an actor is to get people to believe that this is not about me, but something else.

You want to feel that your reader does identify with the characters so that there's a real entry into the story - that some quality speaks to the individual.

I wanted to show those characters discovering it is possible to find common ground, as they make their way through a plotline that I hope is engrossing enough to keep the reader a willing participant.

When people read a novel 600 pages long, six months pass, and all they will remember are five pages. They don't remember the text - instead, they remember the sensations the text gives them.

I hate acting when I see it. I don't want to feel it, I don't want to see it, I want to be taken away with the story - I don't want the actor's ego in front of me. That's what I try to live when I do the work.

Now, I admire The Sims as a game, but from a story viewpoint, there are two glaring problems. First, your relationship with those characters is like they're bugs in a jar. There's no empathy. And secondly, you've got this clunky, chemistry-set interface between you and them, with bars to show how tired or angry they are. It's all tell not show.

In drama, I think, the audience is a willing participant. It's suspending a certain kind of disbelief to try to get something out of a story.

If you want to believe in the fantasy on screen, then you have to believe in the characters and use them as a stepping-stone to lead you into this fantasy world.

I go to great lengths to make certain situations feel right to the reader.

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

You read about somebody, and it doesn't really matter whether or not they really exist - the point is that you get into them like real characters.

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

When I write for kids, I have to make sure they know what can't happen. They have to know it's a fantasy. But when I write for adults, they have to think it's real. Every detail has to be real or they won't buy it.

If the audience sees and feels things are real, then they buy it.

The film depends on the audience's belief in this relationship.

At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism.

What do you know? Haven't you heard of suspension of disbelief?

It's a contract of connection to be in the same space and watch and listen to stories and be caught in them. When you're in a theater, your brain expands because somebody in the theater may do something or respond to something that you wouldn't have.

I think art, especially literature, has the particular power to immerse the viewer or reader into another world. This is especially powerful in literature, when a reader lives the experience of the characters. So if the characters are human and real enough, then readers will feel empathy for them.

The joy of great fiction is that it transports the reader to another world, where new characters live in otherwise unimaginable ways. It is one of the most powerful ways of generating empathy that I know.