I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.
The number of people who read a poem is not as important as how the poem affects those who read it.
I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.
I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.
The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.
Many readers judge of the power of a book by the shock it gives their feelings.
You put books out into the world, and people form their own visuals and images and attachments to characters; those characters become part of them, and they have their feelings about them.
Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance.
You have to surrender to a book. If you do, when something in it seems to be going askew, you are wounded. The more you have surrendered to a book, the more jarring its errors appear.
How you leave the reader is so important - not the climax; I call it the 'exit feeling'.
Discovering the 'impossible' ending to a new book makes me sick with joy and relief.
