List of Peter Carey Quotes

You Could Not Tell A Story Like This. A Story Like This You Could Only Feel.

(from The Story The Last Days Of A Famous Mime) He Said Nothing. He Was Mildly Annoyed At Her Presumption: That He Had Not Thought This Many, Many Times Before. With Perfect Misunderstanding She Interpreted His Passivity As Disdain. Wishing To Hurt Him, She Slapped His Face. Wishing To Hurt Her, He Smiled Brilliantly.

One Has To Be Able To Twist And Change And Distort Characters, Play With Them Like Clay, So Everything Fits Together. Real People Don't Permit You To Do That.

I Don't Need New Boots I Got Bluchers Back Down Home. Eff The Effing Bluchers I'll Buy You New Adjectival Effing Elastic Sided Boots.

Writers Are Always Envious, Mean-minded, Filled With Rage And Envyat Other's Good Fortune. There Is Nothing Like The Failure Of A Close Friend To Cheer Us Up.

So In The First Draft, I'm Inventing People And Place With A Broad Schematic Idea Of What's Going To Happen. In The Process, Of Course, I Discover All Sorts Of Bigger And More Substantial Things.

Glass Is A Thing In Disguise, An Actor, Is Not Solid At All, But A Liquid?an Old Sheet Of Glass Will Not Only Take On A Royal And Purplish Tinge But Will Reveal Its True Liquid Nature By Having Grown Fatter At The Bottom And Thinner At Thetop, And? It Isinvisible, Solid, In Short A Joyous And Paradoxical Thing, Asgood A Material As Any Tobuild A Life From.

What I Find Really Attractive Is Something That's Going To Be A Little Dangerous. Something That Might Get Me Into Trouble; You Know, You Turn Up In London And You've Just Rewritten Dickens. And, Of Course, Then You Think, 'what Have I Done?

It's True: One Of The Things That I've Always Thought About American Society Is That You Never Get The Sort Of Natural Politicisation Of Class Consciousness That You Would Get In The United Kingdom Or Even In Australia.

I Don't Separate My Books Into Historical Novels And The Rest. To Me, They're All Made-up Worlds, And Both Kinds Are Borne Out Of Curiosity, Some Investigation Into The Past.

I Have Written A Memoir Here And There, And That Takes Its Own Form Of Selfishness And Courage. However, Generally Speaking, I Have No Interest In Writing About My Own Life Or Intruding In The Privacy Of Those Around Me.

At The Very End Of A Book I Can Manage To Work For Longer Stretches, But Mostly, Making Stuff Up For Three Hours, That's Enough. I Can't Do Any More. At The End Of The Day I Might Tinker With My Morning's Work And Maybe Write Some Again. But I Think Three Hours Is Fine.

And It's Always Possible That You Will Not Get A Nice Review. So - And That's Enraging Of Course, To Get A Bad Review, You Can't Talk Back, And It's Sort Of Shaming In A Way.

Then I Fell In Love And Everything Went To Hell.

Being Famous As A Writer Is Like Being Famous In A Village. It's Not Really Any Very Heady Fame.

Writers, At Least Writers Of Fiction, Are Always Full Of Anxiety And Worry.

I Think It's Really Boring, From The Point Of View Of The Novelist, To Write About Yourself. Tedious. But That's Very Hard To Explain To People Who Really Don't Believe In The Possibility Of Invention.

I Went To Work In 1962, And By '64 I Was Writing All The Time, Every Night And Every Weekend. It Didn't Occur To Me That, Having Read Nothing And Knowing Nothing, I Was In No Position To Write A Book.

Living Where I Live New York I Don't Think Anyone's Going To Make A Fuss. But It Is More Deeply Satisfying Because It's Of Your Place And Means That You Aren't Forgotten; Someone's Noticed What You Have Been Doing With Your Life.

I Thought I Would Be An Organic Chemist. I Went Off To University, And When I Couldn't Understand The Chemistry Lectures I Decided That I Would Be A Zoologist, Because Zoologists Seemed Like Life-loving People.

I Never Base Characters On Real People. There Are People Who Do That But I Really Don't Know How To Do It.

All Our Heroes, All Our Great Stories Are About Failure.

If You Ever Read One Of My Books I Hope You'll Think It Looks So Easy. In Fact, I Wrote Those Chapters 20 Times Over, And Over, And Over, And That If You Want To Write At A Good Level, You'll Have To Do That Too.

I Don't Think You Have The Right To Shout About Other People's Private Life.