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"They are imaginary characters. But perhaps not solely the products of my imagination, since there are some aspects of the characters that relate to my own experience of a wide variety of people."
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Exlpore more Experience quotes
"Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique."
"I just came into my own sexuality at thirty. I don't think it's something you can deeply experience at 18 or any time before that."
"It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it."
"Through this experience we have been warned - learn everything, don't forget anything!"
"Failure is only an experience. Experience is the foundation of any success."
"We are all the sum of a million moments in our lives."
"Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds."
"Reality spilled out into the alley like water from an overfilled bowl - as sound, as smell, as image, as plea, as response."
"I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements."
"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."
Explore more quotes by Margaret Mahy
"At the same time, I think books create a sort of network in the reader's mind, with one book reinforcing another. Some books form relationships. Other books stand in opposition. No two writers or readers have the same pattern of interaction."
"Anyone interested in the world generally can't help being interested in young adult culture - in the music, the bands, the books, the fashions, and the way in which the young adult community develops its own language."
"When I was a child I had a best friend who lived across the road from me. When her mother died unexpectedly it was like losing a member of my own family. I think I am still affected by the memory of that loss."
"I am really chained to my computer these days so I work in my bedroom, which is a room I have worked in for years and years. It is just as much an office as a bedroom, and during the day, my bed is rather like an extension of my desk."
"There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and "live" with the characters."
"I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation."
"Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act."
"I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been."
"New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications."
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