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" I tend to begin with what you might call the very small world of personal life. But I am certainly interested in how that small, intimate world connects or doesn't connect with a larger world. "
Graham Swift
Small
World
I Am
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" Unfortunately writers take a very small part of the profit on their books, and I think in the e-book world there is a real danger they will take even less, unless they are vigilant and robust about protecting their own interests. "
Graham Swift
Think
Danger
Own
" The novel that's contemporary in the sense of being wholly 'of now' is an impossibility, if only because novels may take years to write, so the 'now' with which they begin will be defunct by the time they're finished. "
Graham Swift
Now
Write
Years
" It can be dismaying, all the same, for a novelist to compare the slowness of the writing with the speed of the reading. Novels are read in a matter of days, even hours. A writer may labor for weeks over a particular passage that will have its effect on a reader for an instant - and that effect may be subliminal or barely noticed. "
Graham Swift
Speed
Labor
Matter
" There's no such thing as the contemporary novel. Before I seem the complete reactionary, let me add that I've happily joined in many discussions about 'the contemporary novel' where what that usually, unproblematically means is novels that have appeared recently or may appear soon. "
Graham Swift
May
Where
Soon
" I do my thinking while I walk. It just loosens up the mind in the way that you don't get when you are sitting at a desk. "
Graham Swift
Way
You
Sitting
" I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it. "
Graham Swift
Find
Think
Like
" One of the things that probably drew me to writing was that it was something you could get on with by yourself. Publishing means going public. But the actual activity could scarcely be more invisible. And private. "
Graham Swift
Yourself
You
Writing
" Structure that really pays off is all based on emotion. I don't write down an elaborate plan. It's really done by feel. It's one area of my writing that I think I've got surer at as I've evolved. "
Graham Swift
Done
Plan
Think
" If people read 'Tomorrow' and feel that it is offering them some view of my own household, they would be very, very wrong. "
Graham Swift
View
Feel
Tomorrow
" I don't reread my books. "
Graham Swift
Books
" Today's news, which may be yesterday's anyway, will be eclipsed tomorrow. "
Graham Swift
Today
Yesterday
News
" The pen is very quick for getting stuff from your brain to the page. I can do hieroglyphics in the margin. There are days when I really enjoy the flow of ink. I mean, nice pen, ink straight on to the page. "
Graham Swift
Page
Nice
Flow
" In my work you often get an abrupt shift in time, a jolt. But the emotional logic will take the reader on. I hope. I trust. After all, our memories do not work with any sequential logic. "
Graham Swift
Time
You
Trust
" I respond to the sound of London being spoken - to the sound of London. "
Graham Swift
Sound
Being
London
" Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying 'You're mad, you're mad.' "
Graham Swift
You
Saying
Man
" The idea of stopping is not unmeaningful to me. I think there might be a time when, in theory at least, you'd say, 'Well I've mostly done what I want to do.' But how could you ever prevent a few years down the line some germ of an idea getting at you and you've got to do it again? "
Graham Swift
Me
You
Done
" When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading. "
Graham Swift
I Am
Am
Ground
" I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary. "
Graham Swift
Speed
Summer
Name
" My upbringing was absolutely not the archetypal writer's upbringing. Even, arguably, the opposite. "
Graham Swift
Writer
Opposite
Absolutely
" When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it. "
Graham Swift
See
Lose
Digital
" Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me. "
Graham Swift
Ahead
Work
Know
" My mother was a great bringer-up of children. My memories are of a sense of security and comfort. "
Graham Swift
Memories
Children
Great
" As a novelist, I suppose I can say that I'm highly articulate. But I know, as a person, in other ways, I'm not always articulate. I think we are all, from time to time, inarticulate, at some level, about some things. "
Graham Swift
Time
Think
Say
" I'm not a writer who looks for the fantastic and the sensational. I like the world we've got. If there is anything special and magical, I have to find it in the ordinary stuff. "
Graham Swift
Special
Find
Looks
" All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a 'rate of production,' for whom it's a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year. "
Graham Swift
Say
Way
Pride
" The e-book does seem at the moment to threaten the livelihood of writers, because the way in which writers are paid for their work in the form of e-books is very much up in the air. "
Graham Swift
Because
Air
Up
" There's an undeniable thrill in seeing what's most current in our lives offered back to us in fictional guise, but it soon dates and it's never enough. "
Graham Swift
Seeing
Most
Enough
" There is a certain inescapable attachment. If you are born somewhere and circumstances don't take you away from it, then you grow up and remain within it. "
Graham Swift
Circumstances
Grow
Grow Up
" People die when curiosity goes. "
Graham Swift
Die
Goes
People
" The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur. "
Graham Swift
Words
Simple
Language