“Almost all great writers have as their motif, more or less disguised, the passage from childhood to maturity, the clash between the thrill of expectation and the disillusioning knowledge of truth. 'Lost Illusion' is the undisclosed title of every novel.” WritingLostNovelChildhoodIllusionExpectationsTitlesMaturityPassagesThrillClashGreat WritersMotifs Author:Andre Maurois
“I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read. The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.” StoriesFantasyNovelChildhoodObservationUsualBleak Author:James A. Baldwin
“When you saw the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," that was Michael [Jackson]'s story write large. Born as an elderly person, Benjamin Button was, in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and in the film starring Brad Pitt, he dies as a newborn child. Michael Jackson's childhood was one of enormous, prodigious production.He was a child prodigy, he was a wunderkind.” WritingChildrenPersonsStoriesFilmDiesBornCasesNovelSawsChildhoodProductionsEnormousCuriousButtonsElderlyNewbornBradProdigiesProdigiousScott FitzgeraldNewborn ChildBenjamin Button Author:Michael Eric Dyson
“I've told youngsters not to write their autobiographical novel at the age of twenty-one; to save it for the time when they're fifty-one or sixty-one. They should write other novels first, to learn their craft; they shouldn't cut their teeth on the valuable material of childhood because they'll never have better material, ever, to work with.” ShouldWritingFirstsAgeNovelCuttingChildhoodMaterialsTwentiesValuableTeethCraftsFiftySixtyAutobiographyTwenty OneYoungsters Author:Laura Z. Hobson
“I would come, many years later, to understand why To Kill A Mockingbird is considered an important novel, but when I first read it at 11, I was simply absorbed by the way it evoked the mysteries of childhood, of treasures discovered in trees, and games played with an exotic summer friend.” WayYearsFirstsImportantGamesNovelMysteryTreeChildhoodSummerTreasureExoticMockingbirdKill A Mockingbird Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.” MadeNovelChildhoodContributionAutobiographyUpbringing Author:V. S. Pritchett
“I was a serious comic collector and fanboy as a kid. I wanted very badly to draw comic books for a lot of my childhood and early adolescence. So when you have an unfulfilled dream like that, when years later you find yourself in a position to make a graphic novel - hell yeah, I'm going to do that.” YearsBookDreamKidsWantedNovelHellChildhoodPositionSeriousDrawsYeahComicFinding YourselfAdolescenceComic BookGraphicCollectorsGraphic NovelsUnfulfilled DreamsHell Yeah Author:Anthony Bourdain
“You have to understand, writing a novel gets very weird and invisible-friend-from-childhood-ish. Then you kill that thing, which was never really alive except in your imagination, and you're supposed to go buy groceries and talk to people at parties and stuff.” PeopleWritingStuffImaginationPartyNovelAliveChildhoodInvisibleGroceries Author:David Foster Wallace
“There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.” NovelFocusChildhood Author:Paul Auster
“The role you've been ascribed in childhood can twist or break apart or seem outgrown, especially when you have your own family and begin to see your own childhood from a different angle. You remember. You reassess. I think that was the kernel of the novel for me. This idea that you change but that your family, the people you were born into, might find that change hard to accept. You no longer fit the mold you've always been ascribed. When the adult children in the book converge back on their small family home there's a sense that they don't fit there anymore.” PeopleThinkingChildrenBookDifferentHomeRememberAcceptingBreakNovelChildhoodFitOur Family Author:Maggie O'Farrell
“You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' " pg. 303” SpiritSufferingFoundCausesImaginationLossLevelsNovelChildhoodConditionsCenturyEmotionalBenefitsLowsRainConstitutionCrisisDeeperTraumaWanderAppetiteSymptomsAdequateHeroinesWearinessYour FavoriteFreezingAilmentsPolioTuberculosisFaintingLiving ConditionsEmotional Trauma Author:Diane Setterfield