Diana Gabaldon Quotes

I couldn't resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of 'A Discovery of Witches' throughout the pages of the novel.

'Frankenstein' is a work rich in possible meanings, so the horror-show interpretation is as valid as any.

When it comes to writers, I'm a huge fan of Ian McEwan. I've never taken a writing course, but reading and deconstructing his novels has been as good a lesson as any.

On reading the first part of Anthony Powell's four-part masterpiece, 'A Dance to the Music of Time,' I was struck by one of the characters - an irritating peripheral character- who keeps showing up in the main protagonist's life.

I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.

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.

One of the things I really like about Victorian novels is the close anatomisation of character. People's gestures and mannerisms and the quality of their thought is very closely identified and analysed.

I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.

In France, for instance, one magazine writer was convinced that On The Road had been a huge influence on Lost Souls and was crushed to learn that I hadn't read the one until after I'd written the other.

People who attack biography choose as their models vulgar and offensive biography. You could equally attack novels or poems by choosing bad poems or novels.

I found 'The Twin' sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. It carried praise from J.M. Coetzee. That seemed ample justification for using it to avoid my own writing. I finished it - weeping - a day later, and I've been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since.

What I'd love to do would be to bring a person from the past to me. In that case I'd pick Jane Austen, because I'd like to know what really made her tick. It's my opinion that she was inhibited by her family and a desire to do the right thing. Away from all that, I believe she'd show new facets and enjoy the adventure.

To be able to analyze plays and novels is so relevant to acting.

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it.

A feeling for history is almost an essential for writing and appreciating good science fiction, for sensing the connections between the past and future that run through our present.

What I've tended to do is to use my own experiences to get into someone else's mind, like in Wuthering Heights.

I try not to think about the trope or whether or not my books are like 'Fifty' or 'Crossfire' or any other series.

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is a masterpiece because it is an episodic novel that has a rigorous form - an unprecedented combination. From the very beginning we know the town of Macondo will endure only a century, so there is a limit to the length of the narrative.

It's always fun to talk about a novel.

In 'Open City,' there is a passage that any reader of Joyce will immediately recognise as a very close, formal analogue of one the stories in 'Dubliners.' That is because a novel is also a literary conversation.

Critics who do the weekly recap, I find that kind of absurd. That's like reviewing chapters in a novel.

While you certainly will recognize 'Outlander' if you've been reading the books, there's also this wonderful sense of novelty and discovery about it because of all the little new touches and twists. I watch it in utter fascination waiting to see what will happen.

'Outlander' is based on a group of books; there's a slight fantasy element to it, but ours is authentic - we try to stick to historical accuracy as possible. Ours is about a small group of people and a core relationship rather than big armies.

When a newspaper columnist wants to write about a novel, the rule is that you're supposed to have a 'hook,' an excuse, a timely reason to bring up the book in question.

If you're reading a novel that was written in 1964, you'll find out more about 1964 than if you're reading a nonfiction book written in 1964 because you're hearing how language was actually used and hearing what people's actual concerns were at the beginning of the 1960s.