Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.
From John le Carre
Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.
Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book.
I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.
I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.
I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.
The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.
Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.
8 perspectives
7 perspectives
6 perspectives
4 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives