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" I was determined to become a criminal lawyer and help look after the poor. "
Kerry Greenwood
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" I've always been in love with Melbourne. When I was 12, I was taken into the city by my grandmother to go to the ballet for the first time. "
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" I got out of difficult situations when many of my classmates didn't because I was smart, and I was lucky, and my parents were amazingly literate and helpful. "
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" I like writing books. I really love words. I love to read. "
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" There are only so many stories in the world... Duplication of plots is bound to happen because most writers have read very extensively in their genre and have become aware they are adding an extra layer to the meta-narrative, finding a new spin on the original. "
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" When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters. "
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" In the 1970s, I used to buy opals and moonstones at the Queen Victoria Market, which were seen as old-fashioned and too heavy at the time. "
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" You need a crime, a detective, and the solution. "
Kerry Greenwood
You
Solution
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" I have been reading crime books ever since I was a child, but I had never tried to write one. "
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Never
Books
Child
" There's something magical about the idea that you can write something down and someone else can read it. I'm still mildly agog about that. "
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Magical
Write
You
" I think it is rather heroic to go into a war zone where everyone is trying to kill you, and you have no way of shooting back. "
Kerry Greenwood
Way
Think
Trying
" As a child, I would demand that visitors to our house tell me a story. I was intensely interested in everything - still am. "
Kerry Greenwood
Child
Me
House
" Unanswered questions make my head itch. "
Kerry Greenwood
Questions
Make
Head
" I fell in love with words in all languages, and I read everything I could find, particularly myths and legends and histories and archeology and any novels. "
Kerry Greenwood
Words
Love
Legends
" I don't steal stories. If I'm a plagiarist, so is Hitchcock. And Tolkien. And Shakespeare. "
Kerry Greenwood
Hitchcock
Shakespeare
Stories
" I have to write three books a year to make a reasonable living out of writing - unless, of course, she gets a major American film deal. Phryne has been optioned since the very first book, but to make a historical TV movie, it costs $30,000 a day extra for the historical detail to be correct, so most people aren't doing it. "
Kerry Greenwood
Writing
Day
People
" Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them. "
Kerry Greenwood
Know
Number
Story
" I research every possible bit of information I can find. Then I use about a tenth of it. But I have to know all the information first; otherwise, I'm not going to convince myself, and if I can't convince myself, then I'm not going to convince the reader. "
Kerry Greenwood
Research
Myself
Information
" If you look at the map, there's Thrace, Greece, Bulgaria, and there's tiny Gallipoli. It is such a small part of the whole peninsula, and yet you only hear about this little tiny bit. "
Kerry Greenwood
Only
You
Small
" My work is very carefully researched. Sometimes I have to ditch an idea because I can't prove it. "
Kerry Greenwood
Because
Sometimes
Idea
" I don't think the process of writing books is in any way sensible. It's not logical, and it's not reasonable. I do write very fast, and I just do it in a binge. Other people binge-drink; I binge-write. "
Kerry Greenwood
Process
Think
People
" I remember talking to John Mortimer, and he said he was relying on Rumpole to keep him in his old age; well, I'm doing the same with Phryne - she's my mainstay. "
Kerry Greenwood
Age
Said
She
" I decided that if I want to write about a female hero in the 1920s, I'm going to have to give her all the advantages I can because she has serious disadvantages in being a woman. I wasn't going to have her cowed or overawed by class, so she had to be titled. "
Kerry Greenwood
Hero
Woman
She
" I went to a basic school, which had children from all corners of the world, and met my best friend and had to learn Greek because she didn't speak English. "
Kerry Greenwood
Best
Children
She
" I used to tell my three younger siblings stories because that was my household chore, and I told long stories in installments because it was easier and more fun than making up a new story every night. I loved it. "
Kerry Greenwood
Long
Fun
Loved
" The stories from World War I are worse than anything I have ever read. "
Kerry Greenwood
World War I
War
Worse
" I'm a duty solicitor, so I can't fix someone's life; all I can do is fix the problem I've got in front of my eyes. "
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Life
Eyes
Fix
" A publisher saw one of my historical novels and thought I would write an admirable detective story, so she offered me a two-book contract, and I grabbed it. "
Kerry Greenwood
Thought
Detective
She
" I liked the Ballarat train as a child. "
Kerry Greenwood
Liked
Child
Train
" I didn't want to write a grown-up account of Gallipoli. I wanted to find out what would happen if I looked at Gallipoli through the eyes of an innocent. "
Kerry Greenwood
Innocent
Find
Eyes
" Sometimes it's hard to start, but once it gets going, once you reach the tipping point - usually between chapter seven and nine - then it's like hanging onto a large snowball as it hurtles downhill. "
Kerry Greenwood
Reach
Chapter
You