Writing Quotes - Page 969

Nostalgia is inevitably a yearning for a past that never existed and when I'm writing, there are no bees to sting me out of my sentimentality. For me at least, fiction is the only way I can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true.

When I think about [characters], I like to think of them in their relationships to each other. In the same way, I think that's how humans are ultimately defined. We are our relationships to one another. And a lot of what's interesting about us happens in the context of other people.

My interest as a writer is not in reflecting actual human speech, which, of course, does not occur in sentences and is totally undiagrammable. My interest is in trying to reflect the reality of experience - how we feel when we talk to each other, how we feel when we're engaging with questions that interest us.

We're professional worriers. You're constantly imagining things that could go wrong and then writing about them.

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story.

But I had to kill you, because the only other possible ending was us doing it, which I wasn't really emotionally ready to write about at ten.' 'Fair enough,' I say. 'But in the revision, I want to get some action.

One of the things I like about making stuff in the age of the Internet, is that people make stuff in response to it. You can see people respond to your work visually or musically or with writing.

The Bible is a collection of writings by lots of different people written over maybe a thousand years, from a number of centuries before Jesus to a century after Jesus. I often like to refer to it as "the Scriptures" to make that point about it being lots of writings that were originally separate. What these writings have in common is that "the Old Testament" is writings that grabbed the Jewish people; writings that convinced them that they were God's word to them. And "the New Testament" is writings that grabbed people who believed in Jesus in the same way.

Everything a man writes about himself is instructive.

I would love to write a book that opens people's eyes to the more interesting side.

I find the public reaction to writing - it's fascinating in this modern age. Of course people are able to interact with me and email me, and I get quite a few I suppose.

I am always surprised when people do get upset. Perhaps its just the nutty people who write to newspapers who get upset.

One does have to learn to travel with a degree of humility and that reflected in writing and personality.

I feel better off doing what I know how to do. I feel a strong element of fictional style in travel writing anyway. Some call it creative nonfiction.

I'd like to write fiction. Perhaps at some stage.

American travel writing is very healthy. I'm always flicking through the reviews and I see plenty of travel writing - and an impressive line up and continual demand.

I have to be careful not to visit one place right after the other and write one book after the other. Because I fear writing the same book all over again. That's why I am taking a break and doing something different this time.

I don't therefore know how to write for the big papers. It must be kids - students - and retired people. And the reality is they are overwhelmed with people sending in their holiday stories and bits and pieces and so on.

I was writing the Paraguay book, a Paragauyan told me that only five thousand people in Paraguay read.

I often think I would like to come even closer to home and write about somewhere like Wales, for example - which we in England tend to be a little snooty about. That's where the coal comes from and that sort of thing.

There is a whole genre of funny travel writers - that's very popular. There's Bill Bryson and people who follow that route and sell travel writing through making people laugh. It's a very difficult group to take. The line between comedy and mockery is sometimes a bit thin.

There is a very big difference between American and British travel journalism, and that's this whole business of the assisted or freebie trip. In Britain we are unashamed about any travel company paying for you to go and then writing about it. That's the only way we can do it. But I have tried the same in the States, and I can't write for any sizeable American newspaper because they tell you to do it on this basis.

I slightly feel, having written Paraguay and Newfoundland - and both of them have developed eccentricities through isolation - I am quite relieved to be back in France and Germany, and I want people to enjoy these books for the writing and not because they feel they can laugh - some will laugh - at these eccentric places, that's not what I intend.

I can't write on the road. I have to be home. I have to be around all those rusted tractors and dilapidated fences and things like that, because it just grounds me in a way that I can't find in a hotel room.

I kind of came from the Townes Van Zandt school of throwing yourself off a cliff and then that's what you write about, and that rule number one of creative writing is you have to have conflict. But if you write about yourself mostly, then if you don't have conflict, then you create it. And the older I get, the more I realize that that's not a very smart way to do this. Not to say I'm the most self destructive person on earth, but it's easy to do.