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"Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be."
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"In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside. A man came out at one point, 'What are you doing?' he questioned me. 'The thing is, I'm writing a book,' I started with a smile. He waved me off, his hand as wide as a tennis racket. 'Everyone is writing a book, my dear,' he said. Between you and I, it's his house that MIrabelle ends up breaking into."
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Personal Development
"I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write."
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Personal Development
"After each of his books, the writer, for a while, feels once again that he can now die happy."
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Personal Development
"When you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad things you did do - well that's memoirs."
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Personal Development
"In writing, you must kill all your darlings."
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Personal Development
"A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly."
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Personal Development
"You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!."
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Personal Development
"Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me."
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Personal Development
"We do not write because we want to, we write because we have to."
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Personal Development
"The best stories are like the best burgers: big, juicy, and messy."
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"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
Inspirational
"If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?"
Love
"Also I could hear Amanda's voice: Why are you being so weak? Love's never a fair trade. So Jimmy's tired of you, so what, there's guys all over the place like germs, and you can pick them like flowers and toss them away when they're wilted. But you have to act like you're having a spectacular time and every day's a party."
Relationship
"Never pray for justice, because you might get some."
Justice
"The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more pre-edited and slicked up, and as even its so-called reality sites raised questions about authenticity in the minds of the viewers, the rough, unpolished physical world was taking on a mystic allure."
Experience
"I always thought eating was a ridiculous activity anyway. I'd get out of it myself if I could, though you've got to do it to stay alive, they tell me."
Feminism
"They were wrong about the sun.It does not go down into the underworld at night.The sun leaves merelyand the underworld emerges.It can happen at any moment.It can happen in the morning,you in the kitchen going throughyour mild routines.Plate, cup, knife.All at once there's no blue, no green,no warning."
Philosophy
"Everything I'd been longing to get away from, true, but not through destruction. I'd wanted to leave home, but have it stay in place, waiting for me, unchanged, so I could step back into it at will."
Home
"I feel despised there, for having so little money; also for once having had so much. I never actually had it, of course. Father had it, and then Richard. But money was imputed to me, the same way crimes are imputed to those who've simply been present at them."
Society
"In the desert there is no sign that says, 'Thou shalt not eat stones."
Humor
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