Quotes by Graham Swift

About Graham Swift:

Graham Colin Swift FRSL is an English writer. Born in London, England, he was educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Today's news, which may be yesterday's anyway, will be eclipsed tomorrow.

Graham Swift

I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary.

Graham Swift

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.

Graham Swift

It can be dismaying, all the same, for a novelist to compare the slowness of the writing with the speed of the reading. Novels are read in a matter of days, even hours. A writer may labor for weeks over a particular passage that will have its effect ...

Graham Swift

I think the purveyors of e-books are only too happy for this atmosphere of 'everything belongs to everybody' to increase because it means they don't have to think so much about the original maker of the thing, or they can get away with paying them le...

Graham Swift

I do my thinking while I walk. It just loosens up the mind in the way that you don't get when you are sitting at a desk.

Graham Swift

There is a certain inescapable attachment. If you are born somewhere and circumstances don't take you away from it, then you grow up and remain within it.

Graham Swift

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.

Graham Swift

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

Graham Swift

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

Graham Swift

There's no such thing as the contemporary novel. Before I seem the complete reactionary, let me add that I've happily joined in many discussions about 'the contemporary novel' where what that usually, unproblematically means is novels that have appea...

Graham Swift

There's an undeniable thrill in seeing what's most current in our lives offered back to us in fictional guise, but it soon dates and it's never enough.

Graham Swift

London is like no other city I know in its ability to become beautiful. You can suddenly turn a corner and there are odd moments - of light, of weather.

Graham Swift

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

Graham Swift

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

Graham Swift

Structure that really pays off is all based on emotion. I don't write down an elaborate plan. It's really done by feel. It's one area of my writing that I think I've got surer at as I've evolved.

Graham Swift

I'm not a writer who looks for the fantastic and the sensational. I like the world we've got. If there is anything special and magical, I have to find it in the ordinary stuff.

Graham Swift

The pen is very quick for getting stuff from your brain to the page. I can do hieroglyphics in the margin. There are days when I really enjoy the flow of ink. I mean, nice pen, ink straight on to the page.

Graham Swift

Unfortunately writers take a very small part of the profit on their books, and I think in the e-book world there is a real danger they will take even less, unless they are vigilant and robust about protecting their own interests.

Graham Swift

If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive--then don't be a writer.

Graham Swift

The idea of stopping is not unmeaningful to me. I think there might be a time when, in theory at least, you'd say, 'Well I've mostly done what I want to do.' But how could you ever prevent a few years down the line some germ of an idea getting at you...

Graham Swift

Author Bio

  • NameGraham Swift
  • DescriptionEnglish writer
  • AliasesGraham Colin Swift
  • BornMay 4, 1949
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • WorksShuttlecock; Waterland; Last Orders
  • AwardsJames Tait Black Memorial Prize; Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize