Leila Slimani Quotes

No matter how many books you've written, whenever you sit down to write a new book, you always feel the same challenge - how do you shape this story into a book that people are going to love.

I was writing fiction, but not finishing fiction.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I write short stories. I write every day.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.

I'm no good at describing my books. 'Holes' has been out now for seven years, and I still can't come up with a good answer when asked what that book is about.

When I really have to push and grope and scratch and claw to make a story work, that's a telltale sign that maybe something conceptually isn't right.

I don't think I'm a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I've been working on it a long time, and it's not getting much better.

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

I never start out with any kind of connecting theme or plan. Everything just falls the way it falls. I don't ever think about what kind of fiction I write or what I am writing about or what I am trying to write about. When I'm writing, what I do is I think about a story that I want to tell.

I don't give plots to Harold Robbins or Graham Greene, because they don't need them, but a lot of authors do.

I think I always have many ideas for books in my head. It's like a forest full of mushrooms. Some are big, some are small.

I know now why I stopped writing short stories. It was at the point when I recognised how difficult they were.

I know some writers that have a million novel ideas, but I don't.

I really need so much time to really make headway on a novel that requires me to disappear from the world in a way.

I remember how I would wait for a play idea. I wasted a tremendous amount of time. I didn't realize that ideas could be made into movies or novels.

That's the way it happens - some characters you set out to use, some are happy accidents. As long as it works, it doesn't really matter how you got them.

I'm more interested in character than events. I've observed that about myself as a writer. I find events, even the most dramatic sort, not to be such fertile ground.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

When I tell people there are three stories in 'Thunderstruck' that were from the same wrecked novel, they want to guess what they are. Nobody has. There are no characters or timelines in common. They're structured very differently. A good novel wouldn't have pulled apart so easily.

There are many ways to go about a story. And if you give yourself some formal constraints, it just makes the job so much - maybe 'easier' isn't the right word, but because you know your boundaries, you can just play within those boundaries much more, so it's much more fun to do.

For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.

A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.