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" Advertising, the product of capitalism, can only justify itself on the premise that the market is a force for good. "
Justin Cartwright
Good
Product
Capitalism
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" Transport is not a ministry the ambitious should accept: no transport minister has gone on to be prime minister. "
Justin Cartwright
Ministry
Gone
Accept
" Not many people like Johannesburg, but I love the place. "
Justin Cartwright
Like
I Love
Love
" Jim Crace's novels have one thing in common, which is that each is set in an entirely original world. None of these worlds is of a specific time or place, but they seem to have some connection to our own lives. "
Justin Cartwright
Time
Connection
Own
" This is the strange thing about South Africa - for all its corruption and crime, it seems to offer a stimulating sense that anything is possible. "
Justin Cartwright
Corruption
Africa
Crime
" Writing 'Judas: The Troubling History of the Renegade Apostle' must have been a difficult task because there are no facts. Judas may quite possibly never have existed at all, and if he did, the Judas kiss may not have happened. "
Justin Cartwright
Facts
Writing
Difficult
" 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. "
Justin Cartwright
New
Brand
Fault
" The druidical claims for Stonehenge seem to belong to that bonkers-but-persistent strand of Englishness that believes there is something particularly mystical about the English themselves, who were clearly a chosen people. "
Justin Cartwright
Seem
Belong
Chosen
" 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. "
Justin Cartwright
Looking
Home
People
" I thought that, post-apartheid, there would be absolutely no interest in South Africa. That has been both true and untrue. The major writers like Gordimer and Coetzee have produced major books. But some of the more minor writers have drifted away. "
Justin Cartwright
Thought
Africa
Books
" I thought I'd write a massive postmodern novel about Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood, but it turns out they couldn't have met because the first mention of Robin Hood appears 60 years after Richard died. "
Justin Cartwright
Hood
First
Write
" When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 88, she was the oldest person ever to receive the prize and one of only 11 female winners in its history. Her award was the end of a very long journey from a remote farm in Rhodesia to a banquet at Stockholm's Stadshus, the grand city hall in Stockholm. "
Justin Cartwright
Journey
End
History
" 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. "
Justin Cartwright
Never
Right
Try
" 'Powers of Persuasion: The Story of British Advertising' by Winston Fletcher - the impression you get from reading this book, which covers post-war advertising until the present, is of a chaotic, self-serving, occasionally brilliant but ultimately shallow business. "
Justin Cartwright
Story
You
Book
" 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. "
Justin Cartwright
Africa
Want
Truth
" The book tour is a strange institution. You are wheeled about to explain your book and even to justify it. "
Justin Cartwright
Strange
Explain
You
" Personally, I have detested Gordon Brown since the moment in 2001 when he tried to make cheap capital out of the Laura Spence affair; as his troubles have piled up, I have felt no sympathy for him at all. "
Justin Cartwright
Cheap
Up
Moment
" Homer Collyer's chosen form of self-expression is the piano, although late in life, when his hearing also goes, he takes to writing. "
Justin Cartwright
Piano
Writing
Chosen
" Strangely enough, the legend of John Brown, who was clearly crazy, helped the abolitionist cause and is thought to have precipitated the American Civil War. "
Justin Cartwright
Crazy
American
Thought
" The point about 'state-of-the-nation' novels is not that they should be about the 'state-of-the-nation', but they should be about people. "
Justin Cartwright
About
People
Point
" You can't believe anything that's written in an historical novel, and yet the author's job is always to create a believable world that readers can enter. It's especially so, I think, for writers of historical fiction. "
Justin Cartwright
Believe
Create
Job
" The successful advertising agent is the one who can convince the clients that he knows something they don't. "
Justin Cartwright
Clients
Who
Successful
" Just before the opening of the 20th century, the Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, are born into great privilege on the Upper East Side of New York, in a mansion overlooking Central Park. "
Justin Cartwright
Privilege
New
Born
" I was lucky to get to Oxford. I am now an honorary fellow of my old college, which is nice, particularly for a colonial like me. "
Justin Cartwright
Lucky
I Am
Nice
" In Sydney, I gave what was billed as a masterclass to bright students of writing at the University of Sydney. But the term 'masterclass' was possibly over-egging the pudding. All I could do was pass on some lessons from my own life, and the most obvious is that if you want to be a writer, you must first have been a reader. "
Justin Cartwright
Want
Writing
You
" 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. "
Justin Cartwright
Life
Green
Wild
" '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. "
Justin Cartwright
Reading
Success
More
" The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford is an astonishing building, designed by Christopher Wren. Its painted ceiling has just been restored so that the darkish miasma that was Robert Streeter's original allegory of truth and light striking the university is now bright with playful cherubs and lustrous clouds. "
Justin Cartwright
Building
Clouds
Theatre
" So often in English fiction, people are either upper-class twits, or else they're knockabouts, less than human. "
Justin Cartwright
English
Fiction
Human
" Coffee must be treated gently and smoothed out. I hadn't realised it was so temperamental. "
Justin Cartwright
Out
Must
Gently
" James McBride's 'The Good Lord Bird' is set in the mid-19th century and is based on the real life of John Brown, the one who lies a-mouldering in his grave. "
Justin Cartwright
Real Life
Lord
Bird