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" When you're taking a fence on a horse, you don't think much; your body does all the thinking, and you're over or you're not over. It's much the same when you are doing a tricky thing with a pen. There are times when I'm writing very, very fast. "

Patrick O'Brian

Think

Writing

Thinking

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" I very much dislike being interviewed by the kind of journalist who tries to dig into your private life. "

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She

" Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years. "

" Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking - the most wildly improbable marriages and uncommon friendship. "

" Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book. "