Graham Swift Quotes

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

I get to draw what I like to draw, basically people hangin' around, and write very humanistic kinds of situations and characters. But I do also like to draw adventure stories - more in terms of drawing them than writing them - and letting my imagination go wild.

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes.

Everyone gets a pencil as a kid, but it doesn't make them all authors or painters or drawers or anything else.

I especially love all the instruments of art: inks, pens, paintbrushes, watercolors and oils, fine papers and canvases, and although I love to mess around with these tools and objects, I have minimal artistic skills.

Words are the basic tools, if you are a writer. But why? Why do you choose one set of tools rather than another?

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

Nothing feels better than constructing a beautiful sentence.

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.

Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy.

Writing music is like tasting the sky. It keeps me dreaming in color.

All I know is when I start getting serious about songwriting... it's like a playground. All responsibilities slip away and you're with your essence. There can be delight there and self-discovery. You can dance there... I think of it as my serious playground.

Writing is a constant exercise in longing.

One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

There is a part of me that has to depend on fantasy, because if you can't be somewhat of a fantasy person, then you can't write

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

I've just begun to dare to think I perhaps am a bit of an artist.

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

Reason is a fine thing, but it is not the only thing available to a writer. It's just part of the arsenal of many things available to a storyteller. Revelation, for example.

For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

I'm born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

Do you have hands? Excellent. That's a good start. Can you hold a pencil? Great. If you have a sketchbook, open it and start by making a line, a mark, wherever. Doodle.