My upbringing was absolutely not the archetypal writer's upbringing. Even, arguably, the opposite. Graham Swift More Quotes by Graham Swift More Quotes From Graham Swift That's the way it is: life inculdes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here. Graham Swift tissues space water The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur. Graham Swift real clever art Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life. Graham Swift memories children fall I had a fear of becoming anything, a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor, but if you become a doctor, that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open; your field is the entire human condition. Graham Swift doctors becoming might As a novelist, I suppose I can say that I'm highly articulate. But I know, as a person, in other ways, I'm not always articulate. I think we are all, from time to time, inarticulate, at some level, about some things. Graham Swift novelists levels thinking I like the world we've got. If there is anything special and magical, I have to find it in the ordinary stuff. Graham Swift special ordinary world How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same time it's so slow and sweet and everlasting. Graham Swift rushing sweet sometimes I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary. Graham Swift names summer sky When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it. Graham Swift taken air book What we wish upon the future is very often the image of some lost, imagined past. Graham Swift wish lost past Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying 'You're mad, you're mad.' Graham Swift mad littles men Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings? Graham Swift strong country children If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive-then don't be a writer. Graham Swift cells writing long Structure that really pays off is all based on emotion. I don't write down an elaborate plan. It's really done by feel. It's one area of my writing that I think I've got surer at as I've evolved. In my work you often get an abrupt shift in time, a jolt. But the emotional logic will take the reader on. I hope. I trust. After all, our memories do not work with any sequential logic. Graham Swift emotional writing memories I do my thinking while I walk. It just loosens up the mind in the way that you don't get when you are sitting at a desk. Graham Swift sitting mind thinking I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it. Graham Swift extraordinary ordinary thinking Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me. Graham Swift novel months years People die when curiosity goes.People have to find out, people have to know. How can there be any true revolution till we know what we're made of? 830 Graham Swift revolution curiosity people Literature is the voice of the human heart. Graham Swift voice wise heart Happiness quells thought. And work quells thought. Graham Swift
