Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Stephen KingRead
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
Interpretation
Writing begins with the author's creativity but should ultimately engage the reader's interpretation.
This quote emphasizes the collaborative aspect of storytelling, suggesting that while the writer's imagination is the starting point of a narrative, it is the reader who completes the experience by bringing their own thoughts, emotions, and interpretations to the story. The fusion of these two perspectives—creator and audience—results in a richer and more meaningful understanding of literature.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a writing workshop to inspire authors.
Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.
Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.
At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.
The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth.
She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself.
It's really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he's the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don't like it.
Chapter One. The Bride." He held up the book then. "I'm reading it to you for relax." He practically shoved the book in my face. "By S. Morgenstern. Great Florinese writer. The Princess Bride. He too came to America. S. Morgenstern. Dead now in New York. The English is his own. He spoke eight tongues." Here my father put down the book and held up all his fingers. "Eight. Once in Florin City...
Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.
Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.