Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville
Kate Grenvilleis an Australian author. She has published nine novels, a collection of short stories, and four books about the writing process...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth14 October 1950
CountryAustralia
dialogue happening life says seem somebody starts stop stuff
I've always had a problem with conventional punctuation of dialogue because it does seem to me to set it off too much from the narrative. I mean, in life, things don't stop while somebody says something, and then stuff starts up again; it's all happening at once.
blunt infinite social
Words are a pretty blunt instrument. There's always going to be slippage between the words and the infinite complexities of a thought. As a writer, I find that frustrating, but as a social animal, I wouldn't have it any other way.
bit encouraged short stories university
When I went to university in Colorado, I was encouraged to write very innovative, experimental things, and some of the short stories in 'Bearded Ladies' are a little bit experimental.
almost huge love music poetry rhythm takes words
I read a lot of poetry, and I love what it does with language. I love music, too, and I think there's probably no coincidence there, that the rhythm of the words is almost as important as the words themselves, and when you can get the two working together, which usually takes me about 20 goes, I feel a huge satisfaction.
seems
I do feel as if... Look, I think I'm a very kind of ordinary person, and it seems to me that things that are of interest to me will probably be of interest to other people. I'm not exceptional; I don't have exceptional thoughts.
basic knowledge rule thin
For years I've wanted to write about the Australian countryside, but, like most Australians, I've only got a tourist's knowledge of it. I thought that if I disobeyed that basic rule of writing - write about what you know - I'd write a thin and inauthentic book.
bit further interest produces writer
A culture produces ideas which are being explored, which of interest to that culture at that moment. And I think one of the things a writer can do is to take those ideas and go a bit further with them.
interested language playing stories telling wonders
Nothing much interested me other than playing with language and telling stories and doing something with the wonders of the world around me.
great
I'm a great believer in the experiential theory of writing.
love
I love to write a book out of questions; in fact, I think it's the only way my writing can operate, if there's something I don't understand.
absolutely enter slightly sort
Each language has its own take on the world. That's why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world.
foreign image lives move national nearly ourselves outside
Australia lives with a strange contradiction - our national image of ourselves is one of the Outback, and yet nearly all us live in big cities. Move outside the coastal fringe, and Australia can feel like a foreign country.
age began family knew realised secret suddenly
'The Secret River' began because, at the age of 50, I suddenly realised I knew nothing about how my own family had got its foothold in Australia.
becomes certain change conscious displace gives groups language power sideline subject
I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes something you're conscious of... that gives you a certain power over it.