Eleanor Catton Quotes

I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same condition. I thought it was unreachable, that it was sort of dead people. It took me a long time - I think I was well into novel writing before I really thought, 'Actually, this is a valid pastime.'

Even if I couldn't get my early novels published, I could still write. I went into newspapers, where I got paid to write every day. If there's a better school for would-be novelists, I don't know what it is.

When you're hiding behind a character all the time, as soon as you have to be yourself, you feel kind of terrified.

If I were ever to grace the pages of 'Vogue,' I would want my image retouched because the audience is so vast. There is great vulnerability in being exposed to that many judging eyes. I feel no small amount of guilt over this willingness to surrender my ideals.

As a writer, I am constantly aware that I take my life in my hands with everything I do and say. It's just a fact of life. For me it always has been.

I know certainly, when one job draws to a close, that I feel I'm simply never going to work again. No one will ever want me for anything ever again. I think that's a vulnerable moment in every actor's life, and it happens every time you finish a film.

Critics can be harsh and I think it's going to take me a long time to make people see what I have inside of me and that I really put my guts into movies and that I'm not superficial and that I'm not just a pretty face.

For a long time I tried to manage an honesty and openness about my personal life because I'm human and I'm normal - well, semi-normal.

I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.

Fame terrifies me. I can say that with honesty. You're terrified that, when people know the real you, they won't like you.

For a long time, I would go out of my way to have a personal appearance on the verge of an insane person, because it was closer to how I felt, but I looked so dumb. So, I just stopped. It was like, 'I'm just going to look like a banker.'

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.

I feel like every time I walk into the audition room, they can tell if you're faking it and if your heart's really not with it. So I try to keep it as real as possible.

I'm a writer; it's not just what I do, but who I am.

Writing doesn't leave much time for hobbies, unless you consider that I began writing as a hobby and have made the hobby into a profession.

Writing is a very intimate thing, especially when you write lyrics and sing them in front of someone for the first time. It's like a really embarrassing situation. To me, singing is almost like crying, and you have to really know someone before you can start crying in front of them.

When everyone thinks they know you, it's hard not to be guarded.

Writing songs is not something I wanted to share with people for a long time. It was precious to me. I didn't want someone to crush it. I waited until I felt strong enough to take the criticism.

On a more practical level, anyone out there who wants to be a writer should clearly recognize that this is a brutal business, where even incredibly talented people sometimes never make a living. If you want to chase such a dream, please have a Plan B in place.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

I make very proper clothes. But I was never that person. For a long time, I thought that was the image I needed to have for my brand. And I thought that's the person that I needed to be. Because it gave me a distinct image that no one can deny.

A writer writes. Period. No matter if someone is buying your work or not.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.