Glen Duncan Quotes

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.

I feel like I've come out of this grown up, maybe because I live through the character vicariously and she grows up so much during the course of this story.

Of all the novels I've written, my favorite is 'Mick Harte Was Here'.

The characters in the book grow up with us. My voice has broken as well.

A lot of first novels are coming-of-age stories. A lot are autobiographical.

I love 'To Kill A Mockingbird' - it seems to offer up new layers every time you read it. I also love Kate Atkinson's 'Behind The Scenes At The Museum' - that's the book that started me writing.

It took me a long time to grow up.

I had been an abject fan of Robert Stone since the early eighties, when I borrowed a copy of 'A Flag for Sunrise' to read on a plane to Rome. I was twenty-something, with a first novel under my belt.

While I've written in the POV (point of view) of adolescent characters before... I never have had to create novels in which those characters not only drive the plot, but also are instrumental in resolving whatever issue the plot deals with.

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

I was a 'young adult' when I wrote 'The Outsiders,' although it was not a genre at the time. It's an interesting time of life to write about, when your ideals get slammed up against reality, and you must compromise.

I mark the reading of 'Look Homeward, Angel' as one of the pivotal events of my life. It starts off with the single greatest, knock-your-socks-off first page I have ever come across in my careful reading of world literature.

I see Igby as my first movie as an adult, and it's a big deal for me because I really, really like the film.

I feel like I've grown up on screen quite a lot.

'Little Miss Sunshine' was really important to me.

I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.

I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.

It seems to me in the past it's been a good thing, as a writer, to have experiences I hadn't expected.

Does everything in this life begin and end with Judy Blume? Perhaps.

I was really young when I was working on 'Freaks and Geeks.' In a lot of ways, that was the experience that informed a lot of what I've become, and I feel like every experience I have is in some way or another an extension of something that started there.

Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.

I started out myself rather late you see, I was 18.

No matter where you are or where you grow up, you always go through the same awkward moments of being a teenager and growing up and trying to figure out who you are.

Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads.