Reader Autonomy Quotes

I want my readers to find their own way.

One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it.

Digital books and other texts are increasingly coming under the control of distributors and other gatekeepers rather than readers and libraries.

The newspaper fits the reader's program while the listener must fit the broadcaster's program.

For me it's more important that I outline all the facets of a controversial issue and let the reader make up his or her mind. I don't care if readers change their minds, but I would like readers to ask themselves why their opinion is what it is.

Instead of taking the reader by the hand and running him down the hill, I want to lead him into a house of many rooms, and leave him alone in each of them.

I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.

Honestly, if anyone reads my work, they're doing me a favor, so they get to use whatever words they want to describe it. I can't control that, nor if they like the work, so best not to even try.

reading is a private act, private even from the person who wrote the book. Once the novel is out there, the author is beside the point. The reader and the book have their own relationship now, and should be left alone to work things out for themselves.

Reading is a free practice. I think the readers are free to begin by the books where they want to. They don't have to be led in their reading.

Of course, you can't legislate for how people are going to read.

I think, if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm presenting a scenario for you as the reader to engage with on your own. I mean, that's what the best art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to be political. I think if you read all my books, you know where I stand, pretty much.

As a reader I want to be present and entertained. I don't want to be taught lessons, and I don't want to be spoken down to. I want to be treated as a peer and to be made to feel welcome.

What reader wants to be told what attitude to strike?

Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.

If I've vividly laid out the narrative, the reader will come to his own conclusions.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

If ebooks mean that readers' freedom must either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.

The ideal, it seems to me, is to show things happening and allow the reader to decide what they mean.

I'm not interested in forcing my beliefs on my readers.

That is, to me at least, one of the most helpful and useful things books do for us: They are generous enough to allow us to choose what matters to us.

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

Ideally a book would have no order in it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Also, and this may sound naïve, but since my early days in journalism, I've felt that getting as close as possible to truth, revealing the reality of a situation in detail, has its own persuasive power. This allows readers to look at the facts and the perspectives presented and draw informed conclusions.

If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.