"... The way I think I write is by creating the actual raw material of fiction first of all, rather rapidly, very quickly, and then this has to be turned into a story or novel. I get quite a lot of manuscripts that people send me, young people asking me what I think of them. And almost all of them are still raw material which hasnāt been pushed or stretched or chopped up in order to give it form. What theyāve done is just to start the job but they havenāt completed it. You have to start with a mess, which is rather like the mess we all live in in the world, you know. You start with that mess and you really have got to create for yourself in your fiction. And then, the next thing you do is to make that palatable for the reader. The reader is terribly, terribly important because without the reader, as far as Iām concerned, thereās nothing. Itās a kind of relationship, sometimes almost a friendship."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from IrelandMemoiristsFellows of the Royal Society of LiteratureNon-fiction authors from IrelandEducators from Ireland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
as quoted by Constanza del RĆo-Ćlvaro in:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Trevor
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
William Trevor
(published as William Trevor; 24 May 1928 ā 20 November 2016) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, playwright, and television dramatist. Although he remained an Irish citizen, he and his wife in 1952 moved to England, where their two sons were born and where he worked as a teacher, sculptor, and for an advertising agency. In 1964 he became a full time writer. In 1976 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). He was appointed in 1979 (CBE) and in 2002 (KBE). In 1994
6 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by William Trevor ā
Related Quotes
"... I liked teaching math best because I donāt have a natural way with figures and therefore had sympathy with the chā¦"
"You have to walk to get to know a city; it was then ā in the Dublin of the 1940s ā that I first discovered that. was ā¦"
"Trevor won many honors, including the of the for āAngels at the Ritz and Other Storiesā; the Prize for literature andā¦"
"Trevor is not a benign . There has always been a frightening, uncomfortable, cruel side to his work, particularly in ā¦"
"... He drew us into the lives of English and Irish s and s, priests and parishioners, and even those who, by dint of ā¦"
"O are you the boy Who would wait on the quay With the silver penny And the apricot tree?"
"Henry is thinking of his lute and of backgammon, Elizabeth follows the waving song, the mystery, Proud in her red wigā¦"
"Timothy Winters comes to school With eyes as wide as a football-pool, Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters: A bliā¦"
"At Morning Prayers the Master helves For children less fortunate than ourselves, And the loudest response in the roomā¦"
"They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock: My father, twenty-five, in the same suit Of Genuine Irish Tweed, ā¦"