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" A freewheeling mind can conceive a virtually infinite number of sequences, but just how that mind picks out and stores those that may perhaps be used later to deal with a given tension, a given situation, is far beyond my understanding. "

Patrick O'Brian

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" My wife and I have spent most of our lives in France, and we are both pretty well bilingual, my wife more purely than I, since as a little girl she went to school in French Switzerland. "

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" Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book. "

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" You can't be happy if you're not tolerably happy with yourself. The addition of friends adds immeasurably to life. "

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" Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years. "

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" In my case, I write in the past because I'm not really part of the present. I have nothing valid to say about anything current, though I have something to say about what existed then. "

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" I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself. "

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" I've never set out to seduce my reader. I don't see him at all clearly. "

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" On a ship, everything is enclosed: the people are right on top of each other and can't get up and walk away. "

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" When you're taking a fence on a horse, you don't think much; your body does all the thinking, and you're over or you're not over. It's much the same when you are doing a tricky thing with a pen. There are times when I'm writing very, very fast. "

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" In a day when, if you insulted a man it might cost you your life, you were probably more civil. "

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" The first interviews I gave were entirely unpleasant. You have people trying to trip you up with impolite questions that have nothing to do with the books. It's simply vulgar curiosity, and I won't have it. "

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" Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking - the most wildly improbable marriages and uncommon friendship. "

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" The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about. "

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" I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters. "

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" I very much dislike being interviewed by the kind of journalist who tries to dig into your private life. "

Patrick O'Brian