The world would be a very sad place if readers could only love one story.

I know what the attitudes of the readers are: These are guys who love women and respect women.

Writing can sometimes be exploitative. I like to take a few steps of remove in order to respect the privacy of the subject. If readers make the link they have engaged with the poem.

I didn't want to be a writer but I became one. And now I have many readers in many countries. I think that's a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I'm proud of it and I enjoy it and it is strange to say it this way but I respect it.

If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling. I don't want to open up my cornflakes and find that they're full of pebbles... You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn't.

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.

The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.