Terry Brooks Quotes

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.

I'm very conscious that I'm an entertainer. Something like 73 percent of my readers are college graduates, so you can't condescend to people. You've got to tell them a story that they will be willing to pay money to read.

It can be dismaying, all the same, for a novelist to compare the slowness of the writing with the speed of the reading. Novels are read in a matter of days, even hours. A writer may labor for weeks over a particular passage that will have its effect on a reader for an instant - and that effect may be subliminal or barely noticed.

The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.

My job is to entertain the readers in such a manner that, when they reach the end of the book, they feel like they've gotten their money's worth.

Writing at home and then going out into the world to talk about why books matter to me feeds the writing. It's a good mix. It provides balance.

I think, what's the point of writing a book that you would get in one sitting?

Emphasizing and rewarding length over quality results in worse writing and more reader abandonment.

Each kind of story has its own problems in writing, but my main concern really is to keep the reader on his toes, or to keep the strip unpredictable. I try to achieve some sort of balance between the two that keeps the reader wondering what's going to happen next and be surprised.

Pace is crucial. Fine writing isn't enough. Writing students can be great at producing a single page of well-crafted prose; what they sometimes lack is the ability to take the reader on a journey, with all the changes of terrain, speed and mood that a long journey involves. Again, I find that looking at films can help. Most novels will want to move close, linger, move back, move on, in pretty cinematic ways.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

The chief difference between good writing and better writing may be measured by the number of imperceptible hesitations the reader experiences as he goes along.

I don't consciously try to take my readers on a journey as I don't really think about my readers when I'm writing. I just try to write what I feel passionately about, to tell a story down onto the page.

I've always been drawn to the best writing that I can find. I don't care if it's in movies or theater or whatever - if you want to be in front of an audience, you have to do writing you believe in.

There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.

If I'm writing a story and you're reading it, or vice versa, you took time out of your day to pick up my book. I think the one thing that will kill that relationship is if you feel me condescending to you in the process. And how does that happen? Well, it happens when I know more than you do, and when I know that I know more than you do, and I'm holding it back from you. So that I can then manipulate you at the end. You know, you think about like in a dating situation how terrible that would be, it's the same thing with a book.

You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.

I write short stories. They may appear big in size, but when you consider it, they're four or five novels in one... In return for picking up one of my books, I'm trying to give them value for their money... the goal of writing any book is to create the illusion that what you are reading is reality and you're part of it.

If you're writing about a character, if he's a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability I don't think he'll be as interesting to the reader.

I don't want to write things that people don't want to read. I would have no pleasure in producing something that sold 600 copies but that was considered very wonderful. I would prefer to sell 20,000 copies because the readers loved it. When I write books I don't actually think about the market in that way. I just tell myself the story. I don't think I'm talking to a 10-year-old boy or a six-year-old girl. I just write on the level the story seems to call for.

Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves.

Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.

The writing of a novel is taking life as it already exists, not to report it but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it and offer it to the reader. The essence will not be, of course, the same thing as the raw material; it is not even of the same family of things. The novel is something that never was before and will not be again.

It's hard to build community around mediocre and mundane writing.

I wanted to write a story that was different than what I've done before - so I decided to write dual love stories that will keep the reader wondering how the stories will come together by the end.