Graham Swift Quotations

When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading.

All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a 'rate of production,' for whom it's a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year.

As a novelist, I suppose I can say that I'm highly articulate. But I know, as a person, in other ways, I'm not always articulate. I think we are all, from time to time, inarticulate, at some level, about some things.

I had a fear of becoming anything, a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor, but if you become a doctor, that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open; your field is the entire human condition.

Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.

Of course there are times when I hate London, but equally there are times when I can walk 'round a corner and I really feel that this is my place.

I don't reread my books.

I respond to the sound of London being spoken - to the sound of London.

I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it.

If people read 'Tomorrow' and feel that it is offering them some view of my own household, they would be very, very wrong.