"There is no doubt that one would like to have readers." (p.310)
"Instead of asking what the text means, I asked what it does to its potential readers." (p.311)
"aesthetic response, as the hallmark of reception theory, is to be conceived in terms of interaction between text and reader." (p.311)
"Reception theory focused not only on the interface between text and reader but also on that between text and context." (p.311)
"Focusing primarily on two points of intersection - between text and context and between text and reader - reception theory, as I have tried to formulate it, conceives of literature as a form of interaction. This conception goes against the aura surrounding autonomous art, as well as against the notion of literature as a representation of life;" (p.312)
"I tried to counter subjectivism through a phenomenology of reading, focusing on what happens in reading and on how the reader is engaged in processing the text." (p.312)
"if a literary text does something to its readers, it simultaneously tells us something about them." (p.313)
"Reception theory and literary anthropology, as I have tried to develop them in my writings, were not conceived for a specific audiences. Instead, my guideline has always been to explore reasons for the existence of literature" (p.314)
"By now it will be evident that like most writers, I initially address an audience of one - myself. However, like most writers I live in the hope that my own preoccupations will stike answering chords in others." (p.314)