Jim Crace Quotes

When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.

I'm becoming more of a novelist as I get older. The novel just seems the truer form. There's less artifice involved.

I don't think I have a very novelistic brain. I like to read, but I don't know if I could ever write a novel.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

It isn't as if a writer merely records life as it unfurls. Reality does not automatically transcribe as literature; real people are not shapely, compelling characters to be harvested. Charming facts and sharp observations rarely slide seamlessly into whatever narrative is at hand.

When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible.

The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with readers. Maybe I'm writing one long narrative, and each book, however different from the last, is just a chapter.

SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.

'The Secret Life of Bees' was my first novel, so I had no process. I was flying by the seat of my pants, as they say, trying to understand how I, as a novelist, would work with story.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

Once I started writing novels, I understood how hard it was to write really good short stories.

The great advantage of a novel is you can put in whatever comes into your head - it has the same shape as the human brain.

I think the plasticity of the novel is its greatest challenge. There are no rules; there is no necessary form. You can know what you want it to be, or do, and still not know how to write it. There are endless possibilities, infinite choices. What voice should it be in? What events to start with? What characters will be part of it?

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.

When you are a novelist, you are used to making a narrative do what you want.

I know I'm not a wordsmith. And I don't write poetry. Sometimes I think I should, because it's really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels.

I'm looking forward to writing more novels for young adults.

When I read 'Room,' I absolutely loved it, and I thought I knew how to make it.

Sometimes, like in 'Invisible Monsters,' I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.

Usually, when I write a novel, it takes me about 100 pages to figure out the voice of the narrator.

In my experience, a novel is the culmination of various thoughts and impressions collected over time, until something comes along to give them a shape, to turn them into a story.

I've found that in fiction - and this is just the kind of writer I am - I can't really work from an outline. I have a vague idea of the characters at the beginning of the book, and then I have a vague idea of whatever the end of the book will be, but I can't approach creative nonfiction like that.

I didn't know how to write a novel, so I sort of let it happen in waves. The only way I could write it was to think like scenes in a movie.

Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom.