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" So often in English fiction, people are either upper-class twits, or else they're knockabouts, less than human. "
Justin Cartwright
English
Fiction
Human
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" There's this idea of bankers retiring and painting watercolours. You can't dabble in art - it's a life. Being a writer, an artist... is a whole life. "
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" In his later years, Ramakrishna took up residence at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple, from where his radiance extended far, even beyond his death in 1886. "
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Far
" In Sydney, I gave what was billed as a masterclass to bright students of writing at the University of Sydney. But the term 'masterclass' was possibly over-egging the pudding. All I could do was pass on some lessons from my own life, and the most obvious is that if you want to be a writer, you must first have been a reader. "
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" The successful advertising agent is the one who can convince the clients that he knows something they don't. "
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Clients
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Successful
" The druidical claims for Stonehenge seem to belong to that bonkers-but-persistent strand of Englishness that believes there is something particularly mystical about the English themselves, who were clearly a chosen people. "
Justin Cartwright
Seem
Belong
Chosen
" I love John Updike immoderately. I am profoundly shocked that he has gone because he was, for me, the greatest American writer of the second half of the 20th century. He was also a gracious, charming, and witty man. "
Justin Cartwright
American
Me
Man
" Personally, I have detested Gordon Brown since the moment in 2001 when he tried to make cheap capital out of the Laura Spence affair; as his troubles have piled up, I have felt no sympathy for him at all. "
Justin Cartwright
Cheap
Up
Moment
" It is surprising how many people who don't read believe they have a book in them. Why? Nobody would imagine that Alfred Brendel took up the piano on a whim at 25 when he found accountancy unpleasant. "
Justin Cartwright
Up
Nobody
Believe
" I'm not an especially male novelist, but I think men are better at writing about men, and the same is true for women. Reading Saul Bellow is a revelation, but he can't write women. There are exceptions, like Marilynne Robinson's 'Gilead,' but generally, I think it's true. "
Justin Cartwright
Writing
Men
Reading
" Someone once pointed out that there are quite a lot of animals in my books, and I'm sure that is something to do with 'The Wind in the Willows.' I must have picked up a rather anthropomorphic view of them. "
Justin Cartwright
Books
View
Up
" Transport is not a ministry the ambitious should accept: no transport minister has gone on to be prime minister. "
Justin Cartwright
Ministry
Gone
Accept
" If I had been brought up in America, I think I would still have had the same sort of job as a writer. "
Justin Cartwright
Think
Up
America
" I thought I'd write a massive postmodern novel about Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood, but it turns out they couldn't have met because the first mention of Robin Hood appears 60 years after Richard died. "
Justin Cartwright
Hood
First
Write
" You can't believe anything that's written in an historical novel, and yet the author's job is always to create a believable world that readers can enter. It's especially so, I think, for writers of historical fiction. "
Justin Cartwright
Believe
Create
Job
" Strangely enough, the legend of John Brown, who was clearly crazy, helped the abolitionist cause and is thought to have precipitated the American Civil War. "
Justin Cartwright
Crazy
American
Thought
" The Bodleian Library, next to the Sheldonian, is one of the great libraries of the world. As well as holding most of the books printed in England since the first quarter of the 17th century, it houses priceless printed texts, manuscripts, and collections. "
Justin Cartwright
Library
Great
First
" 'The Infinities' is a shortish book but densely loaded with Nabokovian slyness, gorgeous imagery, and disturbing insights into what it means to be mortal. "
Justin Cartwright
Disturbing
Imagery
Book
" I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published. "
Justin Cartwright
Never
Right
Try
" Homer Collyer's chosen form of self-expression is the piano, although late in life, when his hearing also goes, he takes to writing. "
Justin Cartwright
Piano
Writing
Chosen
" Nadine Gordimer came over just before she died. She didn't want to talk about books or the arts, but about the abuse of the constitution by the government. "
Justin Cartwright
Constitution
Talk
She
" 'The Cauliflower' is not strictly a novel, as Barker says in her indispensable afterword. "
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Indispensable
Says
Novel
" I suppose on the filmmaking side, you can learn how to cram a lot into a small space. But I think that advertising, even on what is called the creative side, is incredibly easy if you have that kind of mind. A lot of people regard it as Machiavellian and dangerous, but, in fact, it is morally neutral. "
Justin Cartwright
Small
Mind
You
" I thought that, post-apartheid, there would be absolutely no interest in South Africa. That has been both true and untrue. The major writers like Gordimer and Coetzee have produced major books. But some of the more minor writers have drifted away. "
Justin Cartwright
Thought
Africa
Books
" Coffee must be treated gently and smoothed out. I hadn't realised it was so temperamental. "
Justin Cartwright
Out
Must
Gently
" This Oscar Pistorius business is interesting. There is this cult of carrying lots of guns and being ready to shoot somebody. There were people I knew had guns and carried them openly around Johannesburg. It is frowned on now to carry a gun, but Pistorius and co. got away with it. "
Justin Cartwright
Gun
Business
Interesting
" Winning the Whitbread was a very major thing for me. I'd always been well reviewed, but this made me widely read. "
Justin Cartwright
Me
Well
Been
" It was my idea to do a two-hour course of barista training. I was keen to learn how to finish off my coffee with a picture of a heart or a palm tree or, perhaps, a swan. "
Justin Cartwright
Heart
Training
Tree
" 'Point Omega' starts in an art gallery, where an unnamed man is watching, day after day, a 24-hour version of 'Psycho,' an installation that was created by the Scottish artist, Douglas Gordon. In it, the events and the minutiae of Hitchcock's film are painfully slowly reproduced; the watcher is obsessed with the detail revealed. "
Justin Cartwright
Events
Artist
Man
" Weimar lasted 14 years, the Third Reich only 12. Yet Weimar is always seen as a prelude to the Third Reich, which appears to have been created by Weimar's failures. "
Justin Cartwright
Seen
Years
Which
" When I wrote my first serious novel, 'Interior', I was inspired by a 1978 book of Updike's, 'The Coup', which is set in Africa and will come as a delightful surprise to anyone who has only read his Americana. "
Justin Cartwright
Will
Africa
Serious