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" None of us wants to be reminded that dementia is random, relentless, and frighteningly common. "
Laurie Graham
Dementia
Common
Us
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" I'm thankful my parents obliged me to live with the unvarnished truth: I might not have been a looker, but I was a better speller than the prettiest girl in my class, and I was funnier, too. "
Laurie Graham
Truth
Me
Parents
" I think my mother was baffled by me. We were polar opposites. She was shy and retiring. I was over-fond of the limelight. Many times in my life, I was conscious of embarrassing her with my carrying on. "
Laurie Graham
Mother
Me
Life
" Sundown is often the worst time of day for people with dementia. They can become restless and difficult. "
Laurie Graham
Time
Difficult
Dementia
" Dementia is quite unlike cancer or heart disease or any of those other conditions where you bargain with God for a cure or even just a bit more time. "
Laurie Graham
You
Dementia
Heart
" I have an idea for a story, and if the idea is going to work, then one of the characters steps forward, and I hear her voice telling the story. This is what has happened with all the books I've written in the first person. "
Laurie Graham
Work
Story
Her
" I speak pretty fluent American, though I do so with a strong British accent, and I love America: The scale and the variety of it are astonishing to someone not born there, and I'm convinced that its energy and generosity have somehow rubbed off on me and affected my writing. For the better. "
Laurie Graham
Me
Strong
Generosity
" Not so very long ago, certainly well into the Thirties, a lady companion was a normal feature of life for widows or lone spinsters. "
Laurie Graham
Life
Lady
Well
" Childhood doesn't have to be perfect, and children don't have to be beautiful. From a bit of grit may grow a pearl, and if pearl production doesn't materialise, the outcome will still be preferable to the shallowness of vanity. "
Laurie Graham
Perfect
Beautiful
Childhood
" My preferred style is to write in first person, so I always have to play around with possible narrator voices until I find something that works. "
Laurie Graham
Play
Style
Always
" I hate to think I ever make my husband frightened or unhappy, but I suspect I do. "
Laurie Graham
Hate
Unhappy
Think
" Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels. "
Laurie Graham
End
Life
Me
" My early novels were very understated and English. Fourteen years ago, I met and married my American husband, and as I learned more about his background and culture, I became interested in using American voices. "
Laurie Graham
Husband
More
Early
" My go-to author for knowing it all is Evelyn Waugh. 'A Handful of Dust' is as perfect as a book can get. "
Laurie Graham
Get
Book
Perfect
" Caring burns a lot of fuel - psychological and physical, too, if any lifting is involved. The energy tank is soon emptied, and the toll caring takes is well documented. It's called carer burn-out. "
Laurie Graham
Energy
Caring
Well
" Being eye candy always was a short-term career, and here's the reason. The world finds young women more attractive than old women because youthfulness signals fertility. "
Laurie Graham
World
Young
Candy
" I've always jealously guarded my feminine mystique. I've been married twice, and neither of my husbands has ever seen me put my face on. "
Laurie Graham
Seen
Twice
Always
" My mother was a fastidious and orderly homemaker. I was the messy but creative type. I picture her following behind me through life with a damp rag and an air of exasperation. "
Laurie Graham
Life
Me
Picture
" In grief, after even the happiest of relationships, we go over things again and again. "
Laurie Graham
Relationships
Grief
Go
" I almost always use first person voice in my novels. It has its limitations, but it gives a sense of immediacy that's hard to create with an anonymous, all-seeing narrator. "
Laurie Graham
Person
Create
Always
" I've never minded solitude. For a writer, it's a natural condition. But caring for a dementia sufferer leads to a peculiar kind of loneliness. "
Laurie Graham
Caring
Solitude
Loneliness
" The thing about praising beauty is that good looks are an unforgiving task- master, a Forth Bridge of a maintenance job. The passing years present their accounts. Younger models become available. "
Laurie Graham
Beauty
Bridge
Good
" I've been lucky enough to travel widely. When you're based in Europe, it's very easy to go to Madrid or Budapest for the weekend. I also lived in Italy for ten years and now live in Ireland. "
Laurie Graham
You
Enough
Live
" In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked. "
Laurie Graham
Sometimes
Children
Street
" When my children were young, one of the treats promised by their grandparents was a ride in Grandad's car. "
Laurie Graham
Young
Ride
Grandparents
" Personally, my interest in social history ends around 1959, by which time I was an adolescent. I've always attributed this to my particular sensibilities. I like formality and elegance, and I'm fundamentally conservative. "
Laurie Graham
Elegance
Conservative
Time
" There is something very easy about women's friendships that you don't see as often with men. We all know examples of this, when women will just call each other up or drop a line, not with anything specific to say. "
Laurie Graham
You
Easy
Men
" The wheels of publishing never slow down. "
Laurie Graham
Wheels
Never
Publishing
" With Alzheimer's, recent memory is affected first. At the start, you count the memory loss in days, then hours - then in minutes. But there's also an insidious backward creep of deterioration. "
Laurie Graham
Loss
Memory
Alzheimer
" My research process doesn't vary much. I do a little reading to establish a timeline and decide how I'm going to approach the story. "
Laurie Graham
Process
Going
Reading
" I was fascinated by the culture clash between England and America in the 1950s. My first memories are of being a girl in those post-war years when things were really pretty grim. It wasn't like that in America, which was real boom time. "
Laurie Graham
America
Culture
Girl