Quotes by Jim Crace - Page 2

The celebrity sense of writers is something which is very tempting... But the enthusiasm comes from the fact that it's such a natural activity, storytelling.
Jim Crace / Writer
Enthusiasm
Tempting
Copy Quote
I come from a working-class background where I was much more likely to read socialist books and leaflets than Bronte or Dickens - neither of whom I've yet read.
Jim Crace / Writer
Dickens
Socialist
Working Class
Neither
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When the narrative itself starts knocking on the glassed-in box that was your prescription for how you were going to write this novel... you have to listen to it.
Jim Crace / Writer
Narrative
Prescription
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I'm interested in taking hold of the dull truth narrative and finding inside it the transcendence and spirituality and hysteria normally associated with religion.
Jim Crace / Writer
Hysteria
Narrative
Spirituality
Associated
Normally
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In the U.K., a lot of writers won't show up to support activist issues because they figure they're already repairing the world. I don't want to be one of those people.
Jim Crace / Writer
Activist
Repairing
World People Support
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I'm not going to write any more novels. I don't want to end up being one of these angry, bitter writers moaning that only three people are reading him. I don't want that.
Jim Crace / Writer
Angry
Moaning
Copy Quote
For all the splendours of the world's greatest galleries, visitors are likely to be kept at arm's length, spectators of a world that can seem too rarefied to let them in.
Jim Crace / Writer
Length
Spectators
Visitors
Arm
Galleries
Rarefied
Copy Quote
I don't have a constituency, and I'm not autobiographical in any way. I write these deeply moral books in a country which would prefer irony to anything with a moral tone.
Jim Crace / Writer
Irony
Moral
Tone
Prefer
Autobiographical
Deeply
Copy Quote
Good old-fashioned, puritanical work guilt is, for me, a better colleague than any Muse. If I reach my weekly word target by Friday afternoon, then the weekend is guilt-free.
Jim Crace / Writer
Afternoon
Friday
Guilt
Muse
Old Fashioned
Target
Weekend
Work Good Me
Work Good Better
Colleague
Word
Puritanical
Reach
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My tongue is what I used instead of my fists because I was a small and cowardly young man. Amusing people with stories and being bizarre with words was my way of getting out of fixes.
Jim Crace / Writer
Amusing
Bizarre
Cowardly
Fists
Stories
Tongue
Used
Young
Young Man
Words
Man People Way
Getting
Small
Instead
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Writing careers are short. For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely privileged.
Jim Crace / Writer
Careers
Privileged
Count
Immensely
Published
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I am not - thank heavens - one of those 'driven' writers who spend a fortnight buckled with empty fright over an untouched page only to wake at two in the morning feverish with paragraphs.
Jim Crace / Writer
Driven
Empty
Fortnight
Fright
Heavens
Page
Paragraphs
Thank
Untouched
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Sixteen years as a freelance features journalist taught me that neither the absence of 'the Muse' nor the presence of 'the block' should be allowed to hinder the orderly progress of a book.
Jim Crace / Writer
Absence
Block
Features
Hinder
Journalist
Muse
Orderly
Sixteen
Freelance
Neither
Presence
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I've been very lucky with prizes. But the thing about prizes is that, when you talk about a prize-winning author, you can be talking about one that is well-regarded but doesn't sell any books.
Jim Crace / Writer
Author
Prizes
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Even though my brother and I loved scrumping - we loved the act of climbing trees and grabbing fruit - there was always fear we would be caught. We feared we'd be imprisoned, sent to Australia.
Jim Crace / Writer
Australia
Brother
Caught
Climbing
Fruit
Grabbing
Act
Loved
Feared
Imprisoned
Sent
Though
Trees
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I was brought up in a flat in North London - virtually the last building in London, because north of us was countryside all the way to the coast, and south of us was non-stop London for 20 miles.
Jim Crace / Writer
Countryside
Miles
Non Stop
Virtually
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There is no comparison. The American landscape is so much more dangerous. They have real snakes, mountain lions, bears; we only have adders, and they're more frightened of us than we are of them.
Jim Crace / Writer
Bears
Comparison
Frightened
Landscape
Lions
Mountain
Snakes
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My father had osteomyelitis-his left arm was withered between his elbow and his shoulder ... . But the amputation of a Stone Age man called Leaf, a stoneworker, does not relate to my father at all.
Jim Crace / Writer
Age
Men
Father
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Retiring from writing is not to retire from life, but retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product, in almost every case.
Jim Crace / Writer
Bitterness
Careers
Writing
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I felt that, in some ways, my novels lacked heart because of the distance between me and the subject matter. But no one wants to read a book based on good health, a happy upbringing, a long marriage.
Jim Crace / Writer
Distance
Good Health
Subject Matter
Upbringing
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All the uncontrollable and unpredictable parts of my life - from the actual creation to my emotional responses to the finished book - I've succeeded in banishing to the office. And I think I'm happier for it.
Jim Crace / Writer
Creation
Finished
Uncontrollable
Unpredictable
Actual
Happier
Responses
Succeeded
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When people asked me what I did, I'd say, 'I work in publishing', and when they then say, 'What side of it?', I say, 'Supply' - no doubt leaving them to think I drive the books around in a van and deliver them.
Jim Crace / Writer
Leaving
No Doubt
Publishing
Work Me People
Deliver
Supply
Van
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Even though the method of 'Harvest' was a historical novel, its intentions were that of a modern novel. I'm asking you to think about land being seized in Brazil by soya barons. It's also a novel about immigration.
Jim Crace / Writer
Asking
Brazil
Harvest
Historical
Immigration
Land
Method
Modern
Novel
Intentions
Seized
Though
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While we're having all these debates about how the book is being destroyed by the Kindle, we have to remember that narrative will not be affected at all because it's part of our makeup as a creature on this planet.
Jim Crace / Writer
Destroyed
Makeup
Narrative
Creature
Debates
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As a Midlander and a big walker, I'd always loved ridge and furrow fields, the plough-marked land as it was when it was enclosed. It is the landscape giving you a story of lives that ended with the arrival of sheep.
Jim Crace / Writer
Fields
Giving
Landscape
Arrival
Enclosed
Ended
Ridge
Walker
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I'm very aware when I share a stage with other writers that I'm much less driven than they are. I don't wake up in the middle of the night, pregnant with paragraphs. I don't suffer for my text twenty-four hours a day.
Jim Crace / Writer
Driven
Pregnant
Wake Up
Paragraphs
Suffer
Text
Twenty-Four
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If I talk about my father's funeral, as I did when I was promoting the last novel, 'Being Dead,' I'm not going to tell any lies, but there are certain things I'm not going to tell you, and I'm certainly not going to tell my grief.
Jim Crace / Writer
Funeral
Grief
Novel
Promoting
Certain Things
Certainly
Dead
Lies
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Narrative has been part of human consciousness for a long time. And if it has played a part in all those thousands of years, it will know a trick or two. It will be wise. It will be mischievous. It will be helpful. It will be generous.
Jim Crace / Writer
Wise
Consciousness
Generous
Human Consciousness
Mischievous
Narrative
Time Long Long Time
Trick
Thousands
Thousands Of Years
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The Commonwealth Prize is about celebrating the Commonwealth and the special relationship we have with the ex-colonies - which is part guilt and part warmth - and the Booker Prize isn't an essential part of that, but it is part of that.
Jim Crace / Writer
Relationship
Commonwealth
Guilt
Prize
Special
Warmth
Celebrating
Essential
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Storytelling enables us to play out decisions before we make them, to plan routes before we take them, to work out the campaign before we start the war, to rehearse the phrases we're going to use to please or placate our wives and husbands.
Jim Crace / Writer
Phrases
Please
Routes
Storytelling
Work Out
Decisions
Campaign
Enables
Husbands
Plan
Rehearse
Wives
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The most I have to fear while hiking in Warwickshire and Worcestershire, the two historic British counties closest to my city home in Birmingham, is whether or not the mud awaiting me in the narrow lanes ahead is deep enough to foul my socks.
Jim Crace / Writer
Birmingham
Closest
Foul
Hiking
Historic
Mud
Awaiting
Counties
Narrow
Socks
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My dad didn't have a formal education, but he had a wonderful vocabulary. So in 'Harvest,' I wanted my main character to be an innately intelligent man who would have the vocabulary to say whatever he wanted in the same way as lots of working-class people can.
Jim Crace / Writer
Formal
Formal Education
Harvest
Intelligent
Intelligent Man
Vocabulary
Working Class
Lots
Innately
Main
Main Character
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When you start a novel, it is always like pushing a boulder uphill. Then, after a while, to mangle the metaphor, the boulder fills with helium and becomes a balloon that carries you the rest of the way to the top. You just have to hold your nerve and trust to narrative.
Jim Crace / Writer
Trust
Helium
Metaphor
Narrative
Novel
Pushing
Start Always Your
Balloon
Becomes
Boulder
Carries
Rest
Fills
Hold
Nerve
Start
Uphill
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I'm not thinking when I'm writing, 'How's this going to read?' Or, 'What percentage of the audience is going to stay with me?' The thing itself is what gives me pleasure. Sometimes stuff just falls onto the page so beautifully and happily that it's deeply satisfying. It's selfish!
Jim Crace / Writer
Satisfying
Selfish
Beautifully
Thinking Me Sometimes
Falls
Happily
Onto
Page
Percentage
Copy Quote
I was sick and tired of reading other people's epigraphs. They all seemed to be in ancient Greek, middle French or, when they were translated, they never seemed to relate to the book at hand. Basically, they seemed to be there just to baffle you and to impress you with how smart the writer is.
Jim Crace / Writer
Ancient
Impress
Relate
Sick
Tired
Sick And Tired
Translated
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There is no reason why the Louvre should be your favourite gallery just because it has the grandest collections in France, any more than Kew should necessarily be a favourite garden because it has the largest assemblage of plants, or Tesco your chosen shop because it has the widest variety of canned beans.
Jim Crace / Writer
Assemblage
Beans
Chosen
Collections
Favourite
France
Gallery
Garden
Louvre
No Reason
Variety
Canned
Grandest
Largest
Necessarily
Shop
Plants
Widest
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I was captivated by Sherrie Flick's meticulous and intelligent study of Margaret and Vivette, and the men they share. Reconsidering Happiness is a courageously intimate novel about the young women of modern America, their friendships, their betrayals, and their anxious cravings for everything from sex to pastry.
Jim Crace / Writer
Men
Betrayal
Sex
Copy Quote
If you read the fables, 'Beowulf,' for example, you will know something about the person who writes them, and I like that. Secondly, they will not be about individuals; they will be about community. Thirdly, they're all about moralizing. Fourthly, the way they express themselves takes its tone from the oral tradition.
Jim Crace / Writer
Example
Fables
Tone
Express
For Example
Individuals
Oral
Secondly
Copy Quote
After 25 years sitting on my own in a room, I was looking for a more companionable job and wanted to work more collaboratively. I've also been very lucky in my career, with good advances and multibook deals. But there is some extent to which I worried that I was writing for the contract and not for the impulse of the thing itself.
Jim Crace / Writer
Deals
Impulse
Worried
Advances
Work Good Looking
Contract
Extent
Copy Quote

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Jim Crace Quotes - Page 2

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