This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.

Teenage readers also have a different relationship with the authors whose work they value than adult readers do. I loved Toni Morrison but I don't have any desire to follow her on Twitter. I just want to read her books.

This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves as a possession.

Among the letters my readers write me there is a certain category which is continuously growing and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

I enjoy the Web site a lot and I like being able to talk to my readers. I've always had a very close relationship with them.

I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.

Aside from sales the letters from readers have been primarily positive.

As writers and readers as sinners and citizens our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

I don't want to force my politics on my readers.

One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry as such.

The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

I think movies do play a valuable role in turning people on to the act of reading. I think that phenomenon just creates readers. At first they're going to love 'Harry Potter ' or they may love 'The Hunger Games ' but after that they're going to love the act of reading and wonder 'What else can I read?'

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don't think so... I have to compete with popular culture including TV magazines movies and video games.

I trust that your readers will not construe my words to mean that I would not have gone to a 3 o'clock in the morning session for the sake of defeating the Nebraska bill.

I know there are a lot of readers that think I've got a very crappy marriage just because of the things going on with Rick and Lori but there's really nothing that's been like a mirror. I'm just making this stuff up.