When I grew up in Tasmania, you thought that London was home. You waited to go to England as soon as you graduated, in my case on a ship bound for London via Genoa. Christopher Koch Read Quote
Basically, it comes down to this: do you believe in God, or don’t you believe in God. Christopher Koch Read Quote
Poetry was the first step, and from the age of 18, there was nothing else I wanted to do. Christopher Koch Read Quote
I was completely devoted to reading and books from the age of seven. It took until I was 18 to have the confidence to write poetry. Christopher Koch Read Quote
Writers to some extent are childish, and it’s at the childish level that one really engages with any experience. What really moves you is at the very personal, childish level of the imagination. My business is the imagination, and my imagination is engaged by Asia. Christopher Koch Read Quote
All writers are obviously neurotic… For various reasons, writers retreat into an imaginary world because they find ordinary life rather difficult or boring or both. Christopher Koch Read Quote
I don’t believe novels should carry an obvious message. I don’t want to write characters you can immediately say are good or bad; as in life, most people are a mixture. Christopher Koch Read Quote
I’ve known several spies who have wanted to become novelists. And novelists who became spies, of course. Christopher Koch Read Quote
I make a rod for my own back because people see my novels as quasi documentaries. But it is never history that’s the main event of my books. It’s my characters. Christopher Koch Read Quote
