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All Quotes by author - Melvyn Bragg

" A lot of the novels I admire are 'admirably provincial.' "

" A lot of the novels that I've really enjoyed in my life, whether it's Tolstoy's 'Cossacks,' or 'Sons and Lovers' or 'Jude the Obscure' or 'David Copperfield' or 'Herzog,' have an autobiographical spine. "

" As the 20th century unspooled, a cultural warming melted down many frozen class characteristics. "

" A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you - they see where you're going. "

" Autobiographical fiction is very tricky. "

Autobiographical

" Britain is undoubtedly becoming more cultural. No question of it. People who say it is dumbing down simply don't look around enough. They don't know enough. "

" Class doesn't create culture anymore. "

" Compared to the big 19th-century novelists, I've got a slim volume of work. "

" Connery made Bond real through his physicality. He did most of his own stunts and fights, and the audience knew it was him. "

" Control, like curiosity, can be an exterminator. "

" Craig has explored the darker recesses of 007's psyche. He has shown us the lonely man. And he has shown him falling truly in love. "

" Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly. "

" Darwin talks about evolution, but he doesn't say how it started. Maybe the sense of mystery will dissolve in the face of science, but I am not so sure. We are all described by the human genome, but it's getting people nowhere. "

" Few places on earth have been as affectionately alchemised into literature as the Lake District. "

" Film has changed the way we look at the past. "

" Grime reminds me, if there is an echo, of sort of near enough like Liverpool in the very early Sixties. It's a lot of kids obsessed with music - obsessed with it. "

" I actually admire some of the books by a lot of the writers who write magic realism very much, but it's not for me. It's not what I can do, but even if I could, I don't really want to try. "

" I am 74 now. Looking back, I have a sense of not really being in control of my career. I just went where it took me. "

" I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't. "

" I decided years ago that I am just unfashionable. "

" I don't believe in a personal God, no. And I don't believe in resurrection as it is in the New Testament. "

" I don't feel inferior in the slightest to anybody - or superior to anybody, let's get that clear. But I do feel different. "

" I don't feel like I'm slowing down. "

" I don't get nervous when I'm interviewing someone on film - it can be cut, and we can do it again. It is quite nerve-racking doing things live. "

" I don't go around thinking I'm attractive or not attractive. It has never occurred to me. People don't think like that where I come from... No one has ever said, 'Oh, he's a good-looking bloke.' They just didn't use those words about men. "

" I don't want closure, I don't know what that means or why you would want it. "

" I do think the BBC could do more, but I've always thought the BBC could do more - I think there should be more arts programmes full stop. "

" I enjoy what was called 'swotting' in my day. "

" I enjoy writing. Would I rather be playing golf? No. Would I rather be fishing? No. "

" If I meet pals, we do hug each other, and it's very nice, you know... it's something that's come on me late and became second nature, and it's first nature now! "

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