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" There was a computer in our garage when I was growing up, and I'd go out there in winter and wrap myself in a blanket and write a story. "
Eleanor Catton
Winter
Growing Up
Go
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" It's very brave going from a position of authority to one where you are an apprentice. "
Eleanor Catton
You
Authority
Brave
" The zodiac is a system a person can play with and see meaning in. "
Eleanor Catton
See
Meaning
Person
" 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
" Any description of a person that comes from the outside is very hard to deal with. People don't like being summarised. It's nice to receive a compliment, but it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. "
Eleanor Catton
Me
People
Compliment
" 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
" It seems pretentious to assume that we are not creatures of action. I think often it takes a situation of extreme absurdity, extreme action, to push us to the limits of what our character is, and to change us as people. "
Eleanor Catton
People
Limits
Character
" To experience sublime natural beauty is to confront the total inadequacy of language to describe what you see. Words cannot convey the scale of a view that is so stunning it is felt. "
Eleanor Catton
Language
Words
You
" 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
" An interesting thing about New Zealand, you know, literature is that it really didn't begin in any real sense until the 20th century. "
Eleanor Catton
Real
You
Literature
" I loved 'Middlemarch,' I think that's one of my favourite books of all time, actually. "
Eleanor Catton
Think
Time
I Think
" I went to a state school in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then straight on to the University of Canterbury. But I worked part-time all the way through high school: first with a paper round, then at a fast-food outlet, a video store and a hardware store. "
Eleanor Catton
New
High School
Way
" Money doesn't transform a person - the only thing that can is love. "
Eleanor Catton
Person
Money
Love
" I have always loved reading books for children and young adults, particularly when those books are mysteries. "
Eleanor Catton
Loved
Always
Children
" My mum was a children's librarian, so I spent a lot of time in the library. My reading life, because of my mum's work, was evenly split between American, Canadian, Australian and British authors. "
Eleanor Catton
Work
Children
Life
" 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
" I have written ever since I knew mechanically how to do it. "
Eleanor Catton
How
Ever
Knew
" 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
" Writing is exhilarating, but reading reviews is not. I've been really devastated by 'good' reviews because they misunderstand the project of the book. It can be strangely galvanising to get a 'bad' one. "
Eleanor Catton
Good
Reading
Book
" 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
" The challenge that I set for myself was to see whether or not plot and structure could coexist, and why it was that we had to always privilege one above the other. "
Eleanor Catton
Privilege
Always
Challenge
" I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways. "
Eleanor Catton
Ways
Creative
Problems
" 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
" 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
" Margaret Atwood was the author who took me out of children's literature and guided me towards adult literature. "
Eleanor Catton
Literature
Adult
Children
" 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
" I think the adverb is a much-maligned part of speech. It's always accused of being oppressive, even tyrannical, when in fact it's so supple and sly. "
Eleanor Catton
Always
Think
Speech
" 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
" Fiction is supposed to be immersive and supposed to be entertaining and narrative, so structures have to be buried a little bit. If they come foregrounded too much, it stops being fiction and starts being poetry - something more concrete and out of time. "
Eleanor Catton
Narrative
Too Much
Time
" I am a New Zealander, but I don't want to swallow New Zealand identity in one gulp. "
Eleanor Catton
Am
New
Want
" I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children. "
Eleanor Catton
Books
Well
Children