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
thinking mind sitting
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.
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.
thinking levels way
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.
thinking ordinary extraordinary
I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it.
novels time wholly
The novel that's contemporary in the sense of being wholly 'of now' is an impossibility, if only because novels may take years to write, so the 'now' with which they begin will be defunct by the time they're finished.
actual drew means publishing scarcely
One of the things that probably drew me to writing was that it was something you could get on with by yourself. Publishing means going public. But the actual activity could scarcely be more invisible. And private.
emotional hope logic memories reader shift time work
In my work you often get an abrupt shift in time, a jolt. But the emotional logic will take the reader on. I hope. I trust. After all, our memories do not work with any sequential logic.
barely compare effect instant matter novelist novels particular passage reader slowness weeks writer
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 on a reader for an instant - and that effect may be subliminal or barely noticed.
certain remain somewhere
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.
danger protecting robust unless vigilant writers
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.
add appear appeared complete happily joined means novels recently seem
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 appeared recently or may appear soon.
begin call certainly connects interested intimate larger life might tend
I tend to begin with what you might call the very small world of personal life. But I am certainly interested in how that small, intimate world connects or doesn't connect with a larger world.
concerned existence few length personal props raising scenery
Because each of those numberless non-participants was doubtless concerned with raising in the flatness of his own unsung existence his own personal stage, his own props and scenery - for there are very few of us who can be, for any length of time, me
memories writing emotional
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. In my work you often get an abrupt shift in time, a jolt. But the emotional logic will take the reader on. I hope. I trust. After all, our memories do not work with any sequential logic.