Helen Garner
Helen Garner
Helen Garneris an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 November 1942
CountryAustralia
composed largely lying rather
I just... my childhood seems, when I look back, to be largely composed of reading, lying on the bed. I mean, my mother was always shouting, 'Go outside!' But she shouted it at all of us. I think I was just kind of... rather an introverted child, probably.
admit bad call change people reason redeeming spare ugly
While I was writing 'The Spare Room,' I thought, 'I'm going to look really bad in this book - there's no redeeming this kind of awful, ugly emotion', and I thought, 'I'm not going to change it. I'll call the character 'Helen' and admit to those feelings.' I think this is a reason why people write.
chunk experience machine remembered stolen taking time
It's much more interesting for me to think that taking a chunk of experience and mushing it up together with other things that are inventible, remembered from some other time or stolen from other people's stories... and see if I can make it into something that works, an object, a little machine that runs.
australia failure felt great invent massive novels obligation
I used to feel an obligation to invent things. I felt I was a failure because I didn't do massive great novels about Australia or the outback or something. I just don't feel that any more.
believe inventing totally urge
I don't believe that anything's totally invented... If you're completely inventing a story, there wouldn't be an urge to tell it.
thinking anxious
I think writers are very anxious.
people noses
I like poking my nose into other people's lives.
husband thinking looks
But I now think what I was doing, in a completely unconscious way, was getting off the turf where my husband and I might be rivals. We were both working in fiction... so I look back and I see that I consciously vacated the contested ground.
development natural interest
At the time it seemed like a natural development of my interest in what was going on around me in society.
art healed wounds
But there are some wounds that can never be healed.
violence disturbed violence-against-women
I'm very disturbed by violence against women when it is violence.
art able privilege
It's a terrific privilege to be able to see into somebody else's life.