writers

"They ain’t been here long ’nough. They just barely human. Maybe not even. They suck up the world, don’t taste it."

"Only frustrated people smoke too much and only lonely people are frustrated."

"I didn't think I'd be true to a man again as long as I lived..."

"The intimacy of her mother’s hands and the warmth of the water lulled the Girl into a trance of sensuality she never forgot. Now the blood washing slowly down her breastbone and soaking into the floor below was like that bath—a cleansing."

"I can never get a zipper to close."

"[On the television program Non è la Rai, created with Irene Ghergo and of which he was also the director] My program isn't stupid; it's television, which, apart from a few very rare well-made programs, is completely idiotic. Except that others don't say so, and I shout it out loud."

"There were very few radio stations that played [Squallor's songs], yet they were a resounding success."

"Part of that shorthand is the way that she works as well. I mean she's got this very reduced, very spare kind of style, which I loved. But more than anything I found it so compelling because of this fantastic unconsummated love, that really acts as a huge narrative pull."

"I have a new scarlet coat and I look like a fire engine and I don't give a damn..."

"The way Doyle paints it is that the brotherhood, the Sinn Féin became the home for all these poor — you know, the woebegotten souls who were like trying to find their way."

"In fact her writing reminds me of your writing actually . . . it's insightful and it's layered. And it's a bit like intellectual quicksand"

"Some phrases you have to say out loud. it's like someone has poured warm milk into your skull, you know? It's just beautiful — I loved it."

"...I have a problem with historic novels, I think that they tend to become history lessons and this book at times becomes a history lesson"

"You can read it with a perfectly straight face but kind of chuckle inwardly; that's what I like."

"...of course it wasn't called Lord of the Flies to begin with; it was called something awful like A Cry of Children. And it took 22 goes to get the manuscript actually on the desk at Faber and Faber for someone to accept it. All these stories come out . . . the professional book reader who looked at Lord of the Flies and said 'rubbish, dull, pointless'."

"If someone was to tell me that I'd be raving on TV about a book about Diana, that's pink, [reading on] the bus, as a straight male, I'd tell you that 'you're wrong'. Let me just tell you that it's one of the most compelling books I've read!"

"For me, the idea that people in the past can be present, is not a very strange idea when you've had a lot of experience with people that feel that way. Being with [knowing] elders like Eruera Stirling for 20 odd years . . . he looked at the ancestors as if they were just in the next room."

"I love the title, I loved it. in the same way that the stories take on extra meaning after coming after the other stories. What I love about it is the way the title 'Opportunity' takes on so much meaning coming after the novel's provocation..."

"He taught me everything. He just used to say, and I'll never forget that, he said 'it's not big words and adjectives — that's boring'. And I thought 'ah yes' . . . I learned from that. Simplicity is the art of writing."

"The fact that he can focus so deeply on a dinner, or a conversation at a beach, or you know, the impending non-consummation of a marriage, was really wonderful. It had all the depth. But I was quite captivated by the food, the English food, and how kind of unappealing it was. It was just so banal and humdrum."

"...a lot of really bad books, like just shit books, are written with really great plots that really move along, and why should the devil have all the good tunes you know? I like a good story in a book. It's not very fashionable to say that, because people associate good stories with the kind of books that are a cop-out: books that are like bad middlebrow popular fiction. But what's bad about being entertained?"

"Writing didn't really get a look in until we had children. I made the decision that I was going to stay home and bring the kids up myself, and oddly enough that gave me the opportunity and the time to write finally. I say time very loosely there..."

"The mind of a child is a very different thing, and getting into that mind and just seeing the way the mind works...my younger daughter says 'you know if you stand on your head, you don't blink'. Now I don't know if that's true or not, but what a great line and I'm going to use that in a book that I'm writing at the moment..."

"Molly's from his series Dance to the Music of Time, in episode ten"

"...what I liked about it is . . . you never know if you're nuts, you know? And he had no idea, until they started finding the bodies..."

"...I wouldn't really be interested in writing a biography about someone who was obvious and straightforward. It's the enigma of a particular personality, I think, that drives your interest as a biographer. With someone like [John] Mulgan, someone like [Ralph] Hotere, there is a core there which is truly enigmatic, and which obviously fuels the work."

"The place is the context of the poetry. It's not that I write about the place, but the poetry comes out of my life in the place. So in that way it is tremendously important To me, and I'm sure i wouldn't be writing what I'm writing if I weren't in Bluff."

"...she's not a sentimental writer. There are times when she's as referential as a nun. At times she leaps into a comic, clownish dance. And times when she thunders like an Old Testament prophet."

"I'm always happy because your definition of 'young" is elastic..."

"It's not a world that I know but I came to know something about it though the book which was good, but I see...when I look at literature, when I look at books I look at the structure of them and ... I saw a fairy tale actually, when I think about it you know the traditional princess who becomes a maid who rises to become a queen and all these mad people inbetween on that journey..."

"What keeps me up at night is that these people are siphoning all of this money—they siphon it from the government, they get benefits from the government, they get tax cuts from the government, they siphon all of this money, they siphon your wealth from you. They siphon it in wages by the fact that they don’t increase, they siphon it off, like, shrinkflation, when they act like they—they cry poor and they charge you more for less."

"It's typically Jamesian because in a way its an unambiguous story: you know exactly what's going on, but it creates these ambiguities of feeling in you, because you want her protected, yet you can't like the father who's protecting her..."

"Oh it's terrifying, yeah: you come up to publication day and you suddenly realise 'right that's it, it's out in the world'. I remember when my publishers were telling me that it was starting to get on the bestseller list, and I was thinking 'Okay, well I've got a lot of family and a lot of friends, so okay that accounts for the first week'. And then I started realising that absolute strangers were gonna be reading it and...yeah it is quite terrifying actually."

"...legends are not only necessary to us, but however strong the legend, even if you try to demolish it, you can't. In fact you end up reinforcing it . . . We writers are mythmakers, whether we like it or not. The moment you write a book, you are very often adding to and sometimes creating a myth, and I've done both and I'm very happy with that."

"And no one has ever escaped their chains by forgetting they were there"

"It was just extraordinary from the moment I started reading it. It doesn't have any chapters, and you just don't want it to stop. It's like that feeling of being a child again when you're reading a book and you honestly stay up all night reading it."

"I can tell you this: Art can save your life. Art can absolutely save your life. I believe it from the bottom of my heart. But believe me when I tell you that entertainment will never be your salvation, alright. Art can save your life, but entertainment, entertainment by and large is escapism"

"Once I did that that one time, I was like, ‘oh, I feel like if I can do that I should do that because it keeps everything as raw and as, like, honest and interesting as possible"

"A great deal of my fiction deals with extreme violence erupting in normal lives."

"I never decided that I would; I was just never able to stop."

"...all those other 'How To' books were just about people that knew about this thing. This is different, because he's not a bird-watcher; this is his journey into that world . . . I'd like it hardbacked and leather, because it's a lovely book. It's one you'd want to treasure."

"Hers was the first voice like hers that I had discovered in literature before. I was good at English . . . I had never come across a voice like hers before. She was a black woman from the States, and she just blew my mind..."

"You are made in the likeness of your ancestors. ... As we move through life, it is important to remember the wisdom of those before us. Life changes day to day."

"Detesto el agua tibia y los temperamentos indecisos; por eso amo y odio con llaneza y ardor, y lo que emprendo llega á la cima. Esta jira europea misma que estoy realizando, sola, cumplidos ya los cincuenta años de existencia, es manifestación comprobatoria del carácter cimentado en la sentencia shakespiriana, ser ó no ser. Si no nací en Londres, nací en el Cuzco, y me siento llena de orgullo legítimo. ¿Por qué no confesarlo? El disimulo de nuestras espontaneidades es hipocresía; yo la detesto del mismo modo que al agua tibia."

"“Wherever you are in your career, you have to become an expert at something pretty quickly. Being a generalist and being a smart person is not going to get you where you need to go,”"

"“There’s no question that there are barriers, people who are going to try to make us feel badly about our prospects, people who are going to say it’s not a glass ceiling, it’s a concrete ceiling and you’re never going to overcome it, you’re never going to get there,”"

"“It’s very important to have a mentor who can help you understand the unwritten rules of the company. Try to find three or four people who can look out for you in different ways.”"

"“Should you even consider taking risks in an environment where the economy might be slowing down? Throughout my career, I’ve found it very important to have a mindset that says I have to keep taking chances, because that’s how you learn, that’s how you develop and that’s how you grow,”"

"“Don’t let other people’s diminished expectations for you be the truth about your life,”"

"“Think about hiring people who push you. It’s important that you create an environment among people that says we’re all trying to be better, we can all learn from each other, we can all inspire each other""