Paul G. Tremblay Quotes

I love it when my books cause controversy, when people argue violently about the ending.

I think good books have to make a few people angry.

When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

A novel is, hopefully, the starting point of a conversation, one in which the author engages readers and asks that they see things from a different point of view than they might otherwise.

I'm writing exactly the kinds of books I like to write. And they're the kinds of books I like to read. They're popular commercial fiction. That's what they are.

If there is an audience out there for me, I want them to be surprised when the next book comes out.

I don't think with any book you get used to people falling in love with the story. It's been incredible just to realize your books are being read. It's a pretty amazing feeling.

Usually if nobody hates a piece, nobody loves it, either; and a magazine which sets itself the goal of provoking thought is not doing its job if everybody agrees with what it does.

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

I was very fortunate that my first novel captivated the imaginations of so many readers who asked for a sequel. After that, one book led to another as I discovered other facets to my characters I wanted to investigate further.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

If I ever write a book, it will be called 'Bottle Blonde.'

I think that whenever a book is not a challenge, I'm telling the wrong story.

My books have all generated controversy.

My conception of my ideal reader has expanded quite a lot as I've matured: Ultimately when I think of my ideal reader, it's someone who's not sitting down with the intention of automatically arguing with the book: somebody who's going to give me enough slack to tell my story.

The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.

I like the idea that I'm making things that people might think and argue about.

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

I want my readers to be disturbed. I want them to ask, 'Could this really happen?' It is my job to think up new possibilities, to stimulate thought.

I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.

I want you, as a reader, to experience what I experience, to let that other world, that imaginary world that I have created, tell you things about the real world.

I think once you write fiction, you put it out, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, some of which are going to be shocking to the writer.

Tell the story that's in your heart, and don't hold back. Write a book the reader will want to melt into.

I write to relieve an intellectual itch. I stumble across a hitherto neglected set of events, transformations, characters, or source materials from the past, and they nag at me until I make sense of them in words. But I also write to seduce and to make my readers think.