Geraldine McCaughrean Quotes

The things I write about are completely removed from my own life, but people want to know the characters better.

You live vicariously through your characters.

I think once you write fiction, you put it out, and it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, some of which are going to be shocking to the writer.

To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.

It's a novel experience to have one of my books read by a reading group.

I don't put a lot of description in the books because I write books the way I like to read them, and that is I like to build images and be a creative reader, and so I write that way.

The places where I have the nameless character in 'My Name Is Legion' meet his boss are real places I've been to. That works well for tax purposes, writing into my stories the places I've actually visited.

I think the moment you're writing about somebody who's not exactly you, then the challenge is all equal.

I don't really base any of my characters on specific people that I know, although my characters are informed by the kind of people who live in my community.

A lot of my characters are born out of a small grain in a person that I heighten and take to that next level. They're not based on anyone I've ever met, but they are these extreme versions of something.

Novelists are too often assumed to write veiled autobiography.

I had a lot of really emo stories as a kid. I wrote a lot of fan fiction.

The joy of great fiction is that it transports the reader to another world, where new characters live in otherwise unimaginable ways. It is one of the most powerful ways of generating empathy that I know.

I see my responsibility as to give people something they want to keep turning the pages of and giving people something to chew on, looking at some aspect of human nature that hadn't occurred to them recently.

I'm not angry; I write about angry characters. When I'm doing that, I'm happy. Just like when I'm writing about Mickey Sabbath being lustful, I'm not feeling lustful; I'm happy.

Fiction needs writers and readers, and writers should cultivate both.

I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that it enables the readers' creativity and interaction with the book.

I get to use fiction as a way to work out my thinking and to delight readers in the process. I can't think of any deal that's better for me, and I'm always so grateful that readers have indulged me as I argue with myself in my stories.

Paul Auster is my favourite writer, and I'm sure he'd be a very interesting person to share a journey with.

This may sound strange, but although I feel like I know everything about my characters, the brand of shampoo they use, how many cavities they have, their greatest fear, I don't actually see their faces.

Characters are an extension of your imagination.

This is the beauty of fiction. We may not like these characters, but we inhabit them.

For me that's the magic of the printed page - we don't have to pay attention to the passage of time and focus in on the realities of these characters at a specific age or at a specific time in their lives, and we can play with that to our hearts' content.

I always base my characters around Miss Piggy - she's my idol!

What I like about writing novels is that I'm in my own world for nine months.