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" The books that really made an impact on me were not set in New Zealand. Some were New Zealand novels, but the New Zealandness of them was not what carried me or excited me. "
Eleanor Catton
Me
Zealand
New
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" My father is an expatriate American; he fell in love with New Zealand in his youth and never went home. "
Eleanor Catton
Father
American
Home
" I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve. "
Eleanor Catton
Writing
Think
Together
" I had never read Victorian novels before going overseas. I read a handful of authors, but I had not immersed myself in the literature of the 19th century. "
Eleanor Catton
Literature
Myself
Never
" I've had countless reviews sort that have made me cry. It's funny, it doesn't ever get better either; you can't turn your ears off. "
Eleanor Catton
Me
Better
Funny
" There are a lot of people of my generation in New Zealand literature, young writers on their first or second books, that I'm just really excited about. There seems to be a big gap between the generation above and us; it seems to be quite radically different in terms of form and approach. "
Eleanor Catton
Generation
Young
People
" I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good. "
Eleanor Catton
Great
See
Good
" In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are - about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. "
Eleanor Catton
Experience
Women
Lucky
" Sometimes I'll read something on Twitter, and I'll just be in the darkest of moods for the rest of the day or the rest of the week sometimes. "
Eleanor Catton
Darkest
Sometimes
Rest
" I much prefer a plotted novel to a novel that is really conceptual. "
Eleanor Catton
Novel
Much
Conceptual
" I'm the rogue Canadian in my family - I just happened to be born here while my parents were studying here. "
Eleanor Catton
Here
Family
Born
" My parents took me to the Bronte parsonage in England when I was a teenager. I had a fight with my mum, burst into tears, jumped over a stile and ran out into the moors. It felt very authentic: A moor really is an excellent place to have a temper tantrum. "
Eleanor Catton
Fight
Temper
Tears
" Is the prestige conferred by the Man Booker prize for the book or me? I would prefer it on the book and for me to be treated ordinarily. "
Eleanor Catton
Man
Would
Book
" A trip to the picture framer's, with a selection of prints, is the most joyous outing I can imagine. I've spent more money on framing than on anything else I own. "
Eleanor Catton
I Can
Own
Picture
" I highlight everything I find interesting, and then type out everything I've highlighted, and then print out everything I've typed, and reread these printed notes as often as possible. "
Eleanor Catton
Find
Interesting
Possible
" There are so many ways of posturing that people associate with being a writer. They imagine you wearing a beret and drinking only red wine and being full of yourself, and so, for a long time, the way I felt about writing was too private. I felt it too important and didn't want to be teased about it. So I lied about it. "
Eleanor Catton
Time
Red
People
" I think it's more optimistic about human nature to acknowledge that people are the products of their time but then to see that they have moments of grace and dignity that everybody has. "
Eleanor Catton
Nature
Time
See
" The way that I see astrology is as a repository of thought and psychology. A system we've created as a culture as way to make things mean things. "
Eleanor Catton
Mean
See
System
" The nice thing about the zodiac as a system is it is quite comprehensive as a range of impulses and psychological states it can speak about. "
Eleanor Catton
Nice
System
States
" What I wanted to create with 'The Luminaries' is a book that had structural patterns built in that didn't matter, but if you cared about them, you could look into the book and see them. "
Eleanor Catton
You
Look
Create
" Margaret Atwood was the author who took me out of children's literature and guided me towards adult literature. "
Eleanor Catton
Literature
Adult
Children
" I feel very strongly influenced by long-form box-set TV drama... I feel really excited that, at last, the novel has found its on-screen equivalent, because the emotional arcs and changes that you can follow are just so much more like a novel, and so many amazing shows recently have done as much as film can do to show the interior world. "
Eleanor Catton
You
Drama
Changes
" I would draw a really sharp distinction between creating and producing. I think that they're very different things. "
Eleanor Catton
Think
Creating
Different
" The zodiac is a system a person can play with and see meaning in. "
Eleanor Catton
See
Meaning
Person
" From the very beginning, I had an ambition for 'The Luminaries': a direction - but not a real idea. "
Eleanor Catton
Beginning
Direction
Real
" I am a New Zealander, but I don't want to swallow New Zealand identity in one gulp. "
Eleanor Catton
Am
New
Want
" When I was writing 'The Luminaries,' I read a lot of crime novels because I wanted to figure out which ones made me go, 'Ah! I didn't know that was coming!' "
Eleanor Catton
Know
Writing
Because
" I believe really strongly in imitation, actually: I think it's the first place you need to go to if you're going to be able to understand how something works. True mimicry is actually quite difficult. "
Eleanor Catton
Think
Place
Believe
" I don't see that my age has anything to do with what is between the covers of my book, any more than the fact that I am right-handed. It's a fact of my biography, but it's uninteresting. "
Eleanor Catton
Book
More
Fact
" I loved 'Middlemarch,' I think that's one of my favourite books of all time, actually. "
Eleanor Catton
Think
Time
I Think
" In improvising, you've got your scale; you've got the notes that are going to sound good with other notes, the intervals that are going to sound good. But you've also got all the chromatic possibilities, the possibilities of sounding dissident, of being unexpected. "
Eleanor Catton
Possibilities
You
Good