Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I am neurotic, but I live with it. I think most people are, anyway. "

Related Quotes:

" I can't sum up my books. They're all rather complicated. Sometimes I think they're too complicated. But that's the way I am. When I start to write a book, my head gets full of all kinds of detail. "

" I don't care for people who are given peerages who have paid for them. I think it happens, and I don't like that. "

" Reading taught me how to write. "

" People who have had a stroke and are recovering from it love being read to... especially by someone who is a good reader - it does help them to get better. "

" I used to get an awful lot of letters, and they have almost all gone. I used to answer nearly all of them. "

" Old women especially are invisible. I have been to parties where no one knows who I am, so I am ignored until I introduce myself to someone picked at random. Immediately, word gets round, and I am surrounded by people who tell me they are my biggest fans. "

" I do write about obsession, but I don't think I have an obsession for writing. I'm not a compulsive writer. I like to watch obsession in other people, watch the way it makes them behave. "

" I never carry a notebook while walking around London. I just pick those things up. I'm very good at quizzes. "

" People tell me the most extraordinary things. I've noticed it for years. Perhaps they know I won't be shocked. Or judgmental. "

" If I've got to have a stroke or a heart attack, I'd rather have a heart attack. I don't think that's the only reason I campaign for the Stroke Association, but a stroke would be a terrible thing. "

" People always tell me my books are so dark; I don't think they're particularly dark. I'm not like that. I'm quite a cheerful soul. "

" The old detective story that's got a really complicated motive doesn't apply to mine. "

" As soon as I know it's about technological things or spies, I lose interest. I want to know what goes on in people's minds. "

" Suspense is my thing. I think I am able to make people want to keep turning pages. They want to know what happens. So I can do that. "

" I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while. "

" My mother started to suffer from multiple sclerosis, but nobody knew what MS was then. My father didn't - and later he suffered a great deal of guilt over that. It was an awful business and very fraught. "

" I always write about what interests me. "

" It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible. "

" How could God allow cancer, poverty, the sheer unfairness of so many lives? "

" 'The Chimney Sweeper's Boy' began differently from any previous book I'd written. It actually derives from a story a friend - the novel's dedicatee, Patrick Maher - told me. "

" I love memory sticks. They seem to me to be magic. "

" I like to show what happens to people in the past and how it affects their present. "

" I am interested in names and what they say; it is true. I like to look at the columns of baby names in the newspapers. But I don't run out of new ones for my characters. "

" I don't exorcise anything with my writing. I'm sure people do, but I don't. "

" I often think what it was like not to have much money. I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it. "

" It sounds awful and sort of goody two-shoes, but I never eat between meals. "

" I don't want to marry anybody, but I certainly wouldn't want to marry a bad novelist. "

" Ford Maddox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It's possibly the best-constructed book in the English language. "

" I wouldn't be young again even if it were possible, but I am not going to pretend that growing old is all sweetness and light. "

" Nobody will go on being remembered for a very long time, unless you're Shakespeare or Milton. I have no hope of being remembered at all. "