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" James Salter has talents on the page we novelists would sell souls to the devil for. "

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" I don't reckon there are many writers who start out really expecting writing to be an attainable occupation. Well, I didn't. It was a pipe dream. "

" It's very interesting to me that the nationalist movement in Scotland has become so positive and self-reflective rather than anti-English. The referendum in 2014 was peaceful, for all its deeply and passionately divided people. "

" I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zones; the civil veneer stripped off. "

" 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. "

" I tend to research as I write so that the narrative can take priority, which is important for a piece of fiction, I think, finding out facts as and when I need to. "

" I think you can tell any human story in a particular place. "

" I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown. "

" 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! "

" Over the years, I've lived in a variety of places, including America, but I was born and raised in the Lake District, in Cumbria. Growing up in that rural, sodden, mountainous county has shaped my brain, perhaps even my temperament. "

" I'm a home-roamer and can't do study or office scenarios. "

" 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. "

" We all have our preferences - some people go for birds - but for me, there's just something about the wolf; the design of it is really aesthetically pleasing. "

" You can't see all of a place until you look at it from a distance. "

" Having judged a few competitions, it's clear that novelists are often the laziest short story writers. "

" One of the things I try to do with my writing is try to evoke the spirit of the place. I think these things imprint on the landscape and the culture. "

" Wonderful characters rotate around and through bookshops on a daily basis, competing with and possibly even triumphing over fiction when it comes to entertainment, strangeness and inspiration. "

" For its speculations to be taken seriously, dystopian fiction must be part of a discussion of contemporary society, a projection of ongoing political failures perhaps, or the wringing of present jeopardy for future disaster. "

" My favourite pool is located in a remote valley in the eastern Lake District, surrounded by vine-hung cliffs and slippery boulders. It has a torrential sheet waterfall at one end and is almost black in colour, so it appears bottomless, a portal to nowhere. "

" You are often asked to explain your work, as if the reader isn't able to work it out. And people always try and label you by your work. "

" I felt impelled to write. It felt demonic, and I wanted to improve, the way some people habitually pick up a guitar and get better at playing it and making up songs. "

" The short story is very good at looking at shadow psychologies and how the system breaks down underneath. "

" Quite a lot is required of writers these days in terms of, if not promoting the work, then being a representative of the work. It's a difficult thing, really. "

" Dystopian novels, such as Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' often tend to site their despotised or deformed civilisations in urban environments. "

" 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. "

" Art history became an A-level option at my school the year I started sixth form. This happened because another student and I cajoled and bullied the head of the art department into arranging it with the examination board. "

" Revisiting much-loved childhood novels is never easy. "

" I don't see that books can be written without political context - not if they're relevant and ambitious. "

" Show, don't tell, is a mantra repeated by tutors of creative writing courses the world over. As advice for amateurs, it is sound and helps avoid character profiling, unactivated scenes, and broken narrative frames. "

" Apex predators are good for an environment in terms of biodiversity and trophic cascade - we have very few. But realistically, only a few areas could sustain free-roaming wolves in Britain, mostly in Scotland. "

" 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. "