Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All men want their whores to be unhappy.
Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.
A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past.
I much prefer a plotted novel to a novel that is really conceptual.
Money doesn't transform a person - the only thing that can is love.
It is a feature of human nature to give what we most wish to receive.
The proper way to understand any social system was to view it from above.
A man ought never to trust another mans evaluation of a third mans disposition.
I am a New Zealander, but I don't want to swallow New Zealand identity in one gulp.
I loved 'Middlemarch,' I think that's one of my favourite books of all time, actually.
It's very brave going from a position of authority to one where you are an apprentice.
I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.
Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you.
The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.
From the very beginning, I had an ambition for 'The Luminaries': a direction - but not a real idea.
My father is an expatriate American; he fell in love with New Zealand in his youth and never went home.
I'm the rogue Canadian in my family - I just happened to be born here while my parents were studying here.
I can feel the public side of my life and the private side of my life sort of drifting away from one another.
I have always loved reading books for children and young adults, particularly when those books are mysteries.
Margaret Atwood was the author who took me out of children's literature and guided me towards adult literature.
I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways.
Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own.
Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.
I would draw a really sharp distinction between creating and producing. I think that they're very different things.
I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand.
You can tell when a writer moves out of a place of struggle and into a place of comfort, and it's always a bad thing.
Never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view.
I vote far-left. I am frequently angered by corporate greed and think education ought to be free and teachers paid well.
Long historical books get written by women, but not contemporary experiments, which still seems to be a very male-dominated field.
I've had countless reviews sort that have made me cry. It's funny, it doesn't ever get better either; you can't turn your ears off.
I often feel intellectually frustrated when I'm in a position where I'm not moving forward; when I'm not enquiring about something.
An interesting thing about New Zealand, you know, literature is that it really didn't begin in any real sense until the 20th century.
Is the prestige conferred by the Man Booker prize for the book or me? I would prefer it on the book and for me to be treated ordinarily.
There was a computer in our garage when I was growing up, and I'd go out there in winter and wrap myself in a blanket and write a story.
The nice thing about the zodiac as a system is it is quite comprehensive as a range of impulses and psychological states it can speak about.
It is less fun to talk about what I am feeling rather than what I am thinking. Saying 'I feel awesome' isn't really interesting or enquiring.
Sometimes I'll read something on Twitter, and I'll just be in the darkest of moods for the rest of the day or the rest of the week sometimes.
I think that you have to keep the reader front and centre if you're going to write something that people are going to love and be entertained by.
The way that I see astrology is as a repository of thought and psychology. A system we've created as a culture as way to make things mean things.
I think the adverb is a much-maligned part of speech. Its always accused of being oppressive, even tyrannical, when in fact its so supple and sly.
I think the adverb is a much-maligned part of speech. It's always accused of being oppressive, even tyrannical, when in fact it's so supple and sly.
I had never read Victorian novels before going overseas. I read a handful of authors, but I had not immersed myself in the literature of the 19th century.
What I feel is that true creation happens when you're making something out of nothing - like it's divine, you know. Creation is a completely divine concept.
When I was writing 'The Luminaries,' I read a lot of crime novels because I wanted to figure out which ones made me go, 'Ah! I didn't know that was coming!'
A trip to the picture framer's, with a selection of prints, is the most joyous outing I can imagine. I've spent more money on framing than on anything else I own.
The challenge that I set for myself was to see whether or not plot and structure could coexist, and why it was that we had to always privilege one above the other.
She is a loner, too bright for the slutty girls and too savage for the bright girls, haunting the edges and corners of the school like a sullen disillusioned ghost
I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good.
Astrologys a moving system that depends on where youre looking at it from on Earth. My horoscope here in London would be completely different to down in New Zealand.
Astrology's a moving system that depends on where you're looking at it from on Earth. My horoscope here in London would be completely different to down in New Zealand.