“Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.”

“Writing is a lonely pursuit. The only thing working is imagination and hands.The only difference between writing and masturbation is one is presumably intended for a mass audience.”

“The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audience.”

“I detest audiences - not in their individual components, but en masse I detest audiences. I think they're a force of evil. It seems to me rule of mob law.”

“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.”

“A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to produce a risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book. . . . A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a "mass medium." No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades.”