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" Writers cannot simply have a go, imagining it's easier to produce a story than a novel because fewer words are required. Have a go by all means; be intrepid, but be equipped. "
Sarah Hall
Than
Go
Words
Related Quotes:
" Fear is a relative thing; its effects are relative to power. "
Sarah Hall
Relative
Power
Fear
" I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power. "
Sarah Hall
Power
Think
Always
" Our lives are politically wound. "
Sarah Hall
Politically
Our
Our Lives
" I don't see that books can be written without political context - not if they're relevant and ambitious. "
Sarah Hall
Books
See
Without
" I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first. "
Sarah Hall
Writing
You
Story
" I am a feminist, although I always worry saying that because you then get people asking you about the 1970s. "
Sarah Hall
People
I Am
Always
" Short stories are often strong meat. Reading them, even listening to them, can be challenging, by which I do not mean hard work, simply that a certain amount of nerve and maturity is required. "
Sarah Hall
Work
Reading
Short
" For every prescriptive idea about the craft of fiction, there's at least one writer who makes a virtue of the contrary. "
Sarah Hall
Craft
Writer
Fiction
" Having judged a few competitions, it's clear that novelists are often the laziest short story writers. "
Sarah Hall
Clear
Story
Short
" Swimming in the U.K. is not really about enjoying a sultry experience. It's about cold, clear acts of purification, and constitutional durability. It's about invigoration and bravado. "
Sarah Hall
Clear
Cold
Experience
" Nightmares of a capital city overwhelmed by tsunami, war or plague transfix us, but catastrophe is first felt locally, and there are many homes outside the city. "
Sarah Hall
Overwhelmed
First
Outside
" I felt impelled to write. It felt demonic, and I wanted to improve, the way some people habitually pick up a guitar and get better at playing it and making up songs. "
Sarah Hall
Better
Way
Some People
" I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown. "
Sarah Hall
Card
Evil
Clown
" One of the things I try to do with my writing is try to evoke the spirit of the place. I think these things imprint on the landscape and the culture. "
Sarah Hall
Try
Writing
Think
" Language description and metaphors seem readily available. The things I have to work harder at are plot, pacing, and form. "
Sarah Hall
Language
Things
Work
" Over the years, I've lived in a variety of places, including America, but I was born and raised in the Lake District, in Cumbria. Growing up in that rural, sodden, mountainous county has shaped my brain, perhaps even my temperament. "
Sarah Hall
Brain
America
Growing Up
" Show, don't tell, is a mantra repeated by tutors of creative writing courses the world over. As advice for amateurs, it is sound and helps avoid character profiling, unactivated scenes, and broken narrative frames. "
Sarah Hall
Writing
Sound
Character
" Swimming in the cold and the dark of British autumn is not for the faint-hearted. "
Sarah Hall
Dark
Swimming
Autumn
" Quite a lot is required of writers these days in terms of, if not promoting the work, then being a representative of the work. It's a difficult thing, really. "
Sarah Hall
Work
Difficult
Days
" The beauty of interdisciplinary conversation is that the mode of expression is essentially different for each practitioner, even if ideas are shared. "
Sarah Hall
Expression
Beauty
Conversation
" There's nothing like the vast, dark Atlantic to remind you of your mortality. But terror can also be exhilarating. "
Sarah Hall
Dark
Your
Like
" Apex predators are good for an environment in terms of biodiversity and trophic cascade - we have very few. But realistically, only a few areas could sustain free-roaming wolves in Britain, mostly in Scotland. "
Sarah Hall
Wolves
Environment
Good
" You think back and you ask yourself why you became so interested in wolves. I think it was because when I was very small, growing up in a little hamlet near Shap, we would go to Lowther Wildlife Park for birthday parties. Now closed, it was only three miles from my parents' house. "
Sarah Hall
Think
Birthday
You
" James Salter has talents on the page we novelists would sell souls to the devil for. "
Sarah Hall
Talents
Would
Souls
" Various books revolutionised what I think about novels and showed me that they're not strict, formulaic things. 'Coming Through Slaughter' by Michael Ondaatje was one of them. "
Sarah Hall
Think
About
Through
" I've always been interested in wolves, since I was a child. There was a wolf enclosure in a wildlife park very close to where I was brought up; they were the main attraction. "
Sarah Hall
Child
Always
Wildlife
" My favourite pool is located in a remote valley in the eastern Lake District, surrounded by vine-hung cliffs and slippery boulders. It has a torrential sheet waterfall at one end and is almost black in colour, so it appears bottomless, a portal to nowhere. "
Sarah Hall
Pool
Waterfall
Lake
" It's very interesting to me that the nationalist movement in Scotland has become so positive and self-reflective rather than anti-English. The referendum in 2014 was peaceful, for all its deeply and passionately divided people. "
Sarah Hall
Peaceful
Me
Divided
" I'm very aware of modern countryside issues, such as rewilding: how, as science progresses, we begin to understand that a healthy ecosystem is multiform. "
Sarah Hall
Science
Understand
Healthy
" It's a lovely feeling, just working away at the desk, putting words down, building words up... I think you have to be aware that what you're doing is not just a private act, it's a societal thing. "
Sarah Hall
Think
You
Words