- Nov 07, 2020
You Quotes
Quotes that speak straight to you.
This collection gathers quotes framed around 'you' - from candid reflections on body image pressures passed down in families to observations about how humor can mask real vulnerability. Many touch on how what you know about yourself differs from how others perceive you.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- History
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- Nov 07, 2020
A lot of crime writing suffers from treading water. I feel an obligation to move the character on and not repeat myself. I try to fit him into a different period and a different agenda. That way, you learn slightly more about his personal history in the tradition of the unreliable narrator. It makes it more challenging to write.
- Frustration
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- Nov 07, 2020
Writing is frustration - it's daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It's just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.
- Everything
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- Nov 07, 2020
After a while, you get tired of being the official Scot and defending everything Scottish.
- Down
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- Nov 07, 2020
Of course you bank on your experience, but as a sounding board. It isn't that you write down what happens to you every day. You wouldn't be a writer if you did that.
- Myself
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I feel I'm repeating myself, I'll probably pack it in. What will undoubtedly happen is I'll write one too many. The important thing is to recognize when you've written too many and stop there.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
Let me tell you about the nap. It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man. And he said - I was maybe nine - he said, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off and put a blanket over you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
You write differently in each book. It may appear to be similar to readers, but you're a different writer in each book because you haven't approached that subject before. And every subject brings out a different prose strain in you. Fundamentally, yes, you're contained as one writer. But you have various voices. Like a good actor.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel, really.
- Live
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- Nov 07, 2020
Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
- Hands
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- Nov 07, 2020