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. Kate Grenville Read Quote
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. Kate Grenville Read Quote
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. Kate Grenville Read Quote
I would never write a sentence that didn’t have a nice rhythm, or at least I wouldn’t leave it to be published like that. It seems to me that prose mustn’t be prosaic. Kate Grenville Read Quote
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. Kate Grenville Read Quote
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. Kate Grenville Read Quote
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. Kate Grenville Read Quote
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. Kate Grenville Read Quote
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. Kate Grenville Read Quote
