Rose Tremain Quotes

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.

My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.

As much as I really like the screenwriting thing, the novel is where the author has so much control.

I do not believe that with a fictional character you can force yourself too far away from yourself. There has to be some of you in it.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

With a novel, there is no hurrying it. You're constantly walking into the unknown.

I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

I learnt to love reading. And then I started scribbling stories, and I liked that even more.

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

The novels take longer to write than the picture book texts, and they do take a different sort of concentration. However, a very short, simple story that works well is just as exciting to me as any longer and more complex book.

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

In my free time, I'd written 'Sammy's Hill' - it had started out as a play. I just did it for myself.

Writing novels is where I'm most comfortable. It's a very intimate experience.

I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist.

If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.