John Ralston Saul Quotes

I don't write genre stuff in any form. I'm not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.

I am not a consecutive writer.

The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not respectable - but I think that can also add to the glory of it.

I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.

I never wanted to be mainstream as a writer, but look at what's happened.

If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.

I see genres as generating sets of rules or conventions that are only interesting when they are subverted or used to disguise the author's intent. My own way of doing this is to attempt a sort of whimsical alchemy, whereby seemingly incompatible genres are brought into unlikely partnerships.

I wanted each of my books to be very different from the others, each to be special and uncategorizable, and I knew I could only do that a few times before I was in danger of repeating myself.

For a writer, you definitely do not want to be in the mainstream. You want to be on the edge because that's where the vantage point is. That's where you can see.

My advice to authors would be to try to do something original rather than to try to anticipate what the market is looking for.

I don't like outlining, because books are organic things. Sometimes a book doesn't want to be written in a certain way.

I did not think much what I was writing them for, except that I knew I wanted my next novel to be in some less conventional form than straight narrative.

All my books are accidental books - they come from reacting to things and thinking about things and engaging in a real way. They are not about, 'Oh, did it get a good review in the Guardian?' I don't care.

I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes.

I'm not gonna do the same, tired, standard 'I was born in a log cabin...' kind of book. There's so much more I want to do.

I don't think you can write according to a set of rules and laws; every writer is so different.

I write in a very strange way. Things are very fragmentary for a very long time, and then they come together very quickly near the end of the process.

I've spent my whole literary career blurring boundaries between genres and categories.

No one has the Houdini school of composition.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father.' And you know what they say? 'I could never do that!'

I have to believe everything I write is brand new and I'm writing in this way about these people in a completely new situation for the very first time.

It's a funny habit to write encyclopedia entries. It's not a mass taste.

I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.