Helen Garner
Helen Garner
Helen Garneris an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 November 1942
CountryAustralia
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.
came challenge detachment ideas labour obsession people
Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.
behind female mother parents seem stand support
I like to stand behind them and give support of the kind I didn't get when I was a young mother because I was estranged from my parents for a very long time.. So I don't know which way to go from here and it does seem a particularly female problem.
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.
justice people demand
People demand a lot of the justice system and they demand things that it can't deliver.
book dignity can-do
That's one of the things I hope that the book can do, is to restore some dignity to Joe Cinque.
art jobs teaching
The only thing that I was equipped for with my very mediocre college Arts degree was to get a job in teaching.