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Stories Quotes

“I don't particularly like the idea that there's an arc to the story and that therefore in this scene you have to convey this bit of information or emotion. I like more the feeling that, of course, there is a shape to the story, but that each scene should feel right, should be true at that moment, and that gradually you accumulate these moments of truth until you get enough of them together that it becomes a story that's interesting.”

“At the breakfast table we are footnoting everything that we read. We don't recognise it as such but we encounter an article in the newspaper and then suddenly we recall that a friend had a certain comment on that particular story, a certain bit of news that we saw on the television applies to that and we immediately assemble an idea of a story.”

“Keep your head down, avoid all the distractions of being a writer today—all the shifts in the business, all the drama, all the debating about where publishing is going—and write the best story that you can. It sounds a bit glib, but I think this is advice a lot of people are having trouble following right now. It is so hard to focus. But that is the single key to success.”

“My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.”

“First of all I have to ask myself what am I trying to say and who am I trying to tell the story to. So if it's just 300 words going in the Independent it's very much where, what, who and when - fantastic. If there's a little bit more scope, if I've been given 1500 words by the sports editor, and I can have a little bit of fun, then I need to maybe entertain, include some different stuff.”

“They're always such alive females. And also, all those love stories - no man in Austen has ever fallen in love with a female heroine because she's pretty or beautiful or has long, blonde hair. They fall in love with them because of who they are, because of their vibrancy and their intelligence and if only we were teaching that a bit more in schools.”