Kate Grenville Quotes

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'

I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling.

I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'

If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

I enjoy talking to groups who are interested in the writing process or the industry. I never teach - because truthfully, I don't know how it all works; it just does. Sort of magic-like. But I love to share my experiences and perspectives.

I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.

Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously.

When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.

Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself.

You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.

I never thought I was very good at developing material. I grew up at the BBC where they sent you scripts.

Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

I don't have goals when writing books, apart from getting to the end. I have rather vague ideas about how I want things to feel, I'm big on ambience. I have a title, a beginning and a probable ending and go from there.

I enjoy the research and love actually creating the words. There's not too much I find a drudge when it comes to writing.

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.

As a writer, I've always been interested in others.