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"And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it."
Author Name
Personal Development
"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."
Author Name
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."
Author Name
Personal Development
"After each of his books, the writer, for a while, feels once again that he can now die happy."
Author Name
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."
Author Name
Personal Development
"In writing, you must kill all your darlings."
Author Name
Personal Development
"And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you."
Author Name
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."
Author Name
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!."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."
Author Name
Personal Development
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"From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness."
Darkness
"If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance."
Chance
"Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves."
Life
"If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times. Read anything that often, and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed."
Reading
"No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own."
Mind
"I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one."
Fiction
"As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read."
Fiction
"My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it."
Writing
"I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them."
Church
"I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut."
Life
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