Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" In my early 20s, connecting with fiction was a difficult process. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to what was meaningful, what convinced, and what made sense. "
Sarah Hall
Process
Early
Sense
Related Quotes:
" I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first. "
Sarah Hall
Writing
You
Story
" Revisiting much-loved childhood novels is never easy. "
Sarah Hall
Easy
Never
Childhood
" For every prescriptive idea about the craft of fiction, there's at least one writer who makes a virtue of the contrary. "
Sarah Hall
Craft
Writer
Fiction
" I was the feral, mud-bathing, tree-climbing variety of child. Why would I want to read about pirates when I could build a raft and terrorise sheep along the riverbanks? "
Sarah Hall
Variety
Sheep
Child
" Dystopian novels, such as Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' often tend to site their despotised or deformed civilisations in urban environments. "
Sarah Hall
Often
Site
Urban
" I've always been interested in wolves, since I was a child. There was a wolf enclosure in a wildlife park very close to where I was brought up; they were the main attraction. "
Sarah Hall
Child
Always
Wildlife
" There's nothing like the vast, dark Atlantic to remind you of your mortality. But terror can also be exhilarating. "
Sarah Hall
Dark
Your
Like
" Our lives are politically wound. "
Sarah Hall
Politically
Our
Our Lives
" Writers cannot simply have a go, imagining it's easier to produce a story than a novel because fewer words are required. Have a go by all means; be intrepid, but be equipped. "
Sarah Hall
Than
Go
Words
" Swimming in the cold and the dark of British autumn is not for the faint-hearted. "
Sarah Hall
Dark
Swimming
Autumn
" Swimming in the U.K. is not really about enjoying a sultry experience. It's about cold, clear acts of purification, and constitutional durability. It's about invigoration and bravado. "
Sarah Hall
Clear
Cold
Experience
" I can gabble on now, but I couldn't when I was a kid, so I spent a lot of time in my own head on the moors by myself. It felt like writing was the right way to express myself. "
Sarah Hall
Writing
Time
Myself
" I don't think practitioners should necessarily be advertising their work. "
Sarah Hall
Should
Work
Think
" Short stories are often strong meat. Reading them, even listening to them, can be challenging, by which I do not mean hard work, simply that a certain amount of nerve and maturity is required. "
Sarah Hall
Work
Reading
Short
" It's taken me 15 years to feel I might be able to write and publish short stories, and for the assiduous checks of the industry to allow some through. "
Sarah Hall
Short
Me
Years
" Writing, and its theatre of operation, is better than working shifts packing frozen sausages; that's all I need to think about if I'm having difficulties. "
Sarah Hall
Need
Think
Writing
" I write in the mornings or afternoons - I'm not a night owl and can write for only four or five hours maximum. "
Sarah Hall
Four
Write
Owl
" You think back and you ask yourself why you became so interested in wolves. I think it was because when I was very small, growing up in a little hamlet near Shap, we would go to Lowther Wildlife Park for birthday parties. Now closed, it was only three miles from my parents' house. "
Sarah Hall
Think
Birthday
You
" Fear is a relative thing; its effects are relative to power. "
Sarah Hall
Relative
Power
Fear
" I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zones; the civil veneer stripped off. "
Sarah Hall
Extreme
Out
People
" It's a lovely feeling, just working away at the desk, putting words down, building words up... I think you have to be aware that what you're doing is not just a private act, it's a societal thing. "
Sarah Hall
Think
You
Words
" I was brought up in Cumbria where I saw all these fierce agricultural women. "
Sarah Hall
Up
Women
Saw
" Daniel Woodrell has made a name as a master of prose with personality - a densely descriptive, gamey form of storytelling, one might say traditional storytelling - of late rather an unfashionable mode. "
Sarah Hall
Master
Personality
Late
" There was a lot of fiction I did not enjoy, whose landscapes seemed bland and unevocative, the characters faint-hearted within them, the very words lacking vibrancy. "
Sarah Hall
Enjoy
Landscapes
Whose
" You can't see all of a place until you look at it from a distance. "
Sarah Hall
You
Distance
Look
" I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power. "
Sarah Hall
Power
Think
Always
" I don't see that books can be written without political context - not if they're relevant and ambitious. "
Sarah Hall
Books
See
Without
" Nightmares of a capital city overwhelmed by tsunami, war or plague transfix us, but catastrophe is first felt locally, and there are many homes outside the city. "
Sarah Hall
Overwhelmed
First
Outside
" I wander around the house and write in bed, at the kitchen table, by the window, in the yard. "
Sarah Hall
Window
Bed
House
" When you are a kid, a wolf is an amazing sight, so sumptuous. I sort of knew these were splendid creatures, that I was not going to find them outside roaming around. It was like a dog, but not a dog. It was incredible, a god! "
Sarah Hall
You
Wolf
Dog