Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing should be personal and directed towards an individual rather than a vague notion of an audience.
John Steinbeck emphasizes the importance of personal connection in writing by suggesting that authors should envision writing for a specific reader. This approach not only makes the writing more relatable and engaging but also allows the writer to connect emotionally, crafting a narrative that resonates with the intended audience more profoundly.
Themes
WritingAudienceConnectionCommunicationStorytelling
In practice
Example use cases
A writer reflecting on how to reach their audience during a workshop.
More from John Steinbeck
All quotes →At one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
John SteinbeckRead
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
John SteinbeckRead
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
John SteinbeckRead
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
John SteinbeckRead
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
John SteinbeckRead
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Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
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