Graham Swift
Graham Swift
Graham Colin Swift FRSLis an English writer. Born in London, England, he was educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth4 May 1949
book mean thinking
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 less.
character writing treading
When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading.
book pride years
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.
doctors might fields
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.
writing get-away impulse
Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.
hate london feels
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.
book
I don't reread my books.
sound london
I respond to the sound of London being spoken - to the sound of London.
offering views people
If people read 'Tomorrow' and feel that it is offering them some view of my own household, they would be very, very wrong.
opposites upbringing
My upbringing was absolutely not the archetypal writer's upbringing. Even, arguably, the opposite.
years months novel
Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me.
summer sky names
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.
humble land progress
There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress. It doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away. It’s progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress I the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-ending retrieving what it lost. A dogged and vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn’t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.
space water tissues
That's the way it is: life inculdes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here.