- Snow
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- Nov 07, 2020
Book Quotes
Why books work the way they do.
This page highlights what books can do that film can't, including slower pacing and quiet stretches, alongside a reminder that some things simply translate poorly to screen. For a companion collection, see Books.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Long
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- Nov 07, 2020
Without always meaning to, I write really long short stories, 60-pagers, 90-pagers, pieces of fiction that are too long for all but the bravest magazines to print, and too short for all but the bravest book publishers to publish.
- Government
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- Nov 07, 2020
Part of being innovative in government is sometimes not trying to plot out the last chapter of the book, but to be open and see what comes back.
- Breakfast
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- Nov 07, 2020
I usually get up not before 9. I have a huge library - I'm a big fan of Scandinavian crime fiction - so I'll usually take a book and go off to one of my favorite bistros for a cappuccino or espresso or maybe I'll have some lovely smoked salmon for breakfast.
- Excitement
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- Nov 07, 2020
Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.
- Blinded
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- Nov 07, 2020
The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.
- Deep Down
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- Nov 07, 2020
You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.
- Madness
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- Nov 07, 2020
I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.
- Marriage
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- Nov 07, 2020
I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.
- Forget
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- Nov 07, 2020
I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing.
- Brother
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- Nov 07, 2020