Art & Creativity Quote by R. A. Salvatore

Salvatore’s line is a quiet flex disguised as humility: he’s insisting that the author isn’t a puppet-master hovering above the story, but a first audience member strapped into the same ride. Coming from a prolific fantasy writer known for propulsive pacing and beloved characters, it reads like a mission statement for craft that prioritizes momentum and discovery over literary self-display. The best compliment he can imagine is not “admire my brilliance,” but “I felt what you felt,” and he’s claiming that feeling starts at the keyboard.

The intent is partly practical. If writing resembles reading, the prose has to keep earning the next sentence. You can hear the discipline embedded in it: surprise yourself or you can’t surprise anyone else. That’s a telling posture in genre fiction, where readers arrive with expectations (quests, battles, moral stakes) and punish boredom quickly. Salvatore signals allegiance to the reader’s time and attention, positioning himself less as lecturer and more as entertainer with standards.

The subtext also nudges back against the romantic myth of the omniscient author. Instead of presenting writing as divine transmission, he frames it as iterative immersion: the writer follows curiosity, reacts to characters, turns pages mentally. It’s a subtle democratic move, collapsing the distance between creator and consumer. In an era of fandoms, conventions, and parasocial closeness, that stance matters: it tells readers, “I’m not above you; I’m with you,” while still asserting control through one thing only - the ability to keep the story readable, even to its maker.