Viv Albertine Quotes

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

There isn't any distinction between a reader and a writer - reading is so much a part of it.

All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.

I consider what I write to be literature. I choose the words carefully.

I don't think I could write a book that had an ideological plan going in - I think that would be a terrible book.

Novelists do not swing on the same pendulums as critics.

What I realized is that my interest in literature has more deeply structured my practice than I thought.

A book makes claims of literary art.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

I don't know who said that novelists read the novels of others only to figure out how they are written. I believe it's true. We aren't satisfied with the secrets exposed on the surface of the page: we turn the book around to find the seams.

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

I write short stories. I write every day.

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in.

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.

I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.

The book I'm working on next, which will be my fifth, returns to literary history. I really do love literary history, and I have plenty more ideas on it.

I don't think any novelist should be concerned with literature.

I think everything we do, on one level or another, as writers, most of our writing is informed by our world view.

The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.