Augustine Birrell Quotes

Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure.

Good literature can be created only with something that is different from literature.

I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

To us, the value of a work lies in its newness: the invention of new forms, or a novel combination of old forms, the discovery of unknown worlds or the exploration of unfamiliar areas in worlds already discovered - revelations, surprises.

The element of truth in the concept of genius is to be sought in the object, in what is open, not confined by repetition.

Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.

The young men, they look to me for a story they can get nowhere else, a challenging risky story.

Personally, I enjoy being able to see something that you haven't seen before.

I love to travel. During normal workdays, sometimes it feels like I have to bludgeon ideas out of my soul - but when I'm traveling, relaxed and unpressured, the ideas just spill out.

When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.

The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.'

I've always really enjoyed writing different things because I get bored very easily.

What gets me excited is the original principle.

In order for me to write a scene, it's very important for me to see and experience everything with my own eyes, so yes, I was able to visit some remarkable houses and destinations while I was in China.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself.

Paris is an ideal place to become informed, while Venice is a place to think and write.

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

And if there's anything movies can do in a way that I just love, and I love as an audience is, 'Show me something I don't know about. Show me something I haven't seen.'

I write to satisfy the story or poem or piece of fascinating research that speaks to me. To rub a sore, to resonate with joy, to answer a question no one else has satisfactorily answered for me.

You'll find boredom where there is the absence of a good idea.

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

Make something new, and define territory that's never been. I fall in love with shows because I've never see that before. I fall in love with new vocabularies.

I write for the same reason I read: to find out what's going to happen.

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.