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All Quotes by author - Justin Cartwright
" A connection between poetry and blindness is a classical trope. "
Between
Blindness
Connection
" Advertising, the product of capitalism, can only justify itself on the premise that the market is a force for good. "
Good
Product
Capitalism
" A good novel is something that challenges perception, that allows you to see the world anew through a different point of view - something that genre fiction doesn't do, although it sells more because it doesn't disturb people's innate sense of what a novel should be about. Often, people want characters to be nice, for example. "
Nice
People
World
" 'A Just Defiance' has been a huge success in South Africa. While reading at times like a well-written thriller, its significance is to reveal apartheid to have been far more brutal, ruthless, and self-serving even than we had suspected. "
Reading
Success
More
" America is the big subject of the second half of the 20th century, tackled in one form or another by all the great American male writers. You could make a case for saying that it was the only game in town - from Bellow to Roth to Updike to Richard Ford - America was more or less explicitly the leitmotif. "
American
Game
America
" As Eric Weitz argues, the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was not responsible for the Reich; it was a democratic, socially aware and progressive government, way ahead of many other European governments in its introduction of workers' rights, public housing, unemployment benefit and suffrage for women. "
Government
Ahead
Republic
" As I read 'The Infinities', with its magical, playful richness, its sensuous delight in the power of language to convey the strangeness and beauty of being human, I wondered if J. M. Coetzee, with his bleak, pared-down, elemental view of the world, had ever read a Banville and, if he had, whether he had envied him his astonishing powers. "
Language
World
View
" Coffee must be treated gently and smoothed out. I hadn't realised it was so temperamental. "
Out
Must
Gently
" Complete barista-standard coffee machines cost from £1,600 to more than £20,000. "
Coffee
Than
More
" Consciousness - that, to me, is the theme of the modern novel. "
Theme
Consciousness
Modern
" DeLillo has said that he no longer feels a compulsion to write long, compendious books. In his later years, Saul Bellow said something similar. DeLillo, of course, has written very long in the past, notably with the 850-page Underworld (1997), and his story has been America. "
Years
Past
Story
" For novelists, sharply drawn moral conflicts are often useful, and even human and personal disasters can be seen as material. "
Moral
Useful
Seen
" Franschhoek - French Corner - is a place which serves South Africans as a kind of sophisticated fantasy, an alternative version of what life could be. The small town is enclosed by wild mountains, at this time of year blue and dusty green. "
Life
Green
Wild
" Franschhoek Valley was, in recent memory, a simple place with some notable vineyards and two or three streets of Victorian cottages and a few older, thatched houses. The valley was settled early in the 1680s by Huguenots fleeing repression. "
Three
Early
Memory
" Germany led the world in photography and film: 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari' and 'Metropolis' are works that, to this day, film buffs revere. "
Photography
World
Day
" Great architects like Taut, Mendelsohn, and Gropius built some astonishing buildings which were to change the way architects around the world thought. Brecht and Weill forever changed musical theatre; Kaethe Kollwitz and others changed German perceptions of the purposes of art. "
World
Theatre
Great
" Helen Zille, formidable leader of the Democratic Alliance, routinely vilified as representing white interests only, is trying to make sure everyone knows that the case against Zuma is strong and is trying to have it investigated in a judicial review. "
Judicial
Trying
Leader
" Historians and journalists always have agendas, but if I want to find out what's going on in South Africa, I read Nadine Gordimer or John Coetzee because they offer novelistic truth. "
Africa
Want
Truth
" 'Homer and Langley' is the work of E. L. Doctorow's old age. There are fewer Homeric references than you might have expected, given that the narrator is called Homer Collyer and is blind, although, like the classical Homer, not born blind. "
Old Age
Work
You
" Homer Collyer's chosen form of self-expression is the piano, although late in life, when his hearing also goes, he takes to writing. "
Piano
Writing
Chosen
" I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published. "
Never
Right
Try
" If Franschhoek has a fault, it is in the lavish refurbishment of wine farms and estates which has reached absurd proportions. Some, like Graf Delaire Estate, are brand new, with jewellery shops, indoor streams, and very high-end lodges for rent at prices not many South Africans can afford. "
New
Brand
Fault
" If I had been brought up in America, I think I would still have had the same sort of job as a writer. "
Think
Up
America
" If I was at home, I'd find myself checking email and looking at the Internet when I should be working. In the library, I can get an awful lot done in a couple of hours, but it can become quite sociable, which you have to watch out for. There are a lot of people you can pop out and have a coffee with. "
Looking
Home
People
" I grew up reading Updike. I remember being alarmed to find that he had published short stories by the time he was 22. I think 'Pigeon Feathers' was the first collection of stories I read. Only much later did I discover his non-fiction reviewing and art criticism. "
Time
Art
Find
" I have worshipped Berlin from the day I read 'Two Concepts of Liberty' in South Africa. It seemed to make it respectable to be a liberal. "
Make
Africa
Day
" I love Franschhoek, and straight off the plane, I went to the incomparable Quartier Francais, on the main street, for breakfast. This small hotel and restaurant is regularly near the top of every poll for best hotel and restaurant in Africa. "
Restaurant
Best
Breakfast
" I love John Updike immoderately. I am profoundly shocked that he has gone because he was, for me, the greatest American writer of the second half of the 20th century. He was also a gracious, charming, and witty man. "
American
Me
Man
" I'm not an especially male novelist, but I think men are better at writing about men, and the same is true for women. Reading Saul Bellow is a revelation, but he can't write women. There are exceptions, like Marilynne Robinson's 'Gilead,' but generally, I think it's true. "
Writing
Men
Reading
" In a way, advertising, for all its shallowness, its love of design, its modishness and its self-justification, is curiously innocent. The idea of the hidden persuader or the manipulator is largely absurd. "
Love
Innocent
Advertising
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