The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

Rosten suggests that the writer’s deepest motive is not social approval but intelligibility: to have one’s meaning accurately received. Respect, praise, and love are gratifying, but they can coexist with misunderstanding; a writer, by contrast, experiences misreading as a fundamental defeat of the act itself. The line also implies a quiet loneliness in authorship: writers trade the ordinary comforts of being liked for the more exacting hope of being comprehended. In elevating “being understood” above affection, Rosten frames writing as an ethical and communicative vocation—an attempt to bridge private consciousness and public language—rather than a performance for status.