William Trevor Quotes

I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.

I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.

Every writer is an outsider.

As an Anglo-Indian kid in Bolton, I was basically in a minority of one. That was a source of misery, but at the same time, one of the effects of receiving the message that you don't belong to the club is that you watch the club with detachment. The fact that no one quite knew who I was was a major contributory factor in starting to write.

Being an outsider helps breed comedy.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.

We're not on the outside looking in, we're on the outside looking out.

The writer is always to some extent in exile, wherever he is, because he is somehow outside, separated from others; there is always a distance.

This is not what it is like to be you, I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds flew over the rooftop. It is just me thinking about being you. And before I headed back down the hill, I walked in a circle around your house, making an invisible line which you would have to cross before dark.

You have to be an outsider to write.

My natural state is an outsider. I've always felt outside the group, and I've always been analyzing the group.

I have spent a lot of years on the outside looking in.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

Life's pretty funny when you're objectively on the outside looking at it.

I am best viewed from a distance.

A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed against whatever window on the other side of which he sees his material.

My natural state is an outsider, and no matter what group I'm in or where I am, I've always felt like I'm outside the group, and I've always been analyzing the group.

You think I alienate myself from society? Of course I alienate myself from society. It’s the only way I know of not being constantly reminded of all the ways I’m alienated from society.

I stand at a distance, like a person who comes from another world.

It's always easy to judge from afar

Never write about a place until you're away from it, because it gives you perspective. Immediately after you've seen something you can give a photographic description of it and make it accurate. That's good practice, but it isn't creative writing.

I think it's true that, as is often observed, the writer is always an outsider. A writer is someone who is telling stories about what's going on, which is something you can't do if you're totally caught up in the moment.