In ‘Snow for Mother’, a mother waits for her little boy to grow up so that she can take him to Alaska to experience the real snow, which he never knew as a little boy in the tropics. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote
Shoes tell you a lot about someone. Think of ‘Strangers on a Train.’ The first thing we see are Bruno’s shoes. We know right away that something is up. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote
So many writers live their whole lives in rooms. You can be too civilised in the environment you have around you, too oriented towards speaking engagements and literary festivals and dinner parties. That has no interest for me these days. You get to a point where you don’t care anymore. At that point, you can start to write. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote
Sometimes you can publish a first novel in a kind of lyrical flourish, but it is not really a lyrical form. The beautiful truths about the world are more hard won than that. Novels should be bleach boned. It’s a question of cumulative observation and lived suffering. It takes time. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote
My parents were decent, aspirant first-generation middle class. They read ‘Reader’s Digest’, listened to classical music; my grandparents had a bust of Stalin on the mantelpiece. The kids of that generation were terrified of being below par, class-wise. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote
I’ve got everything against likable characters. Likable characters are usually completely forgettable, and we don’t really care. I think we love villains… precisely because they show us these disturbing complexities that I don’t think nice characters do. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote
I spent a fair amount of time in Communist Poland when I was young – my wife was from there – and I had the impression that boredom was one of the things that was undermining that whole society from the inside. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote
Military history is essential to understanding any history and, moreover, is a terrifying and sobering study in the realities of human nature – for yes, to me, such a thing exists, and history indeed proves it. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote
I love the novel as a form, as an adventure of mind and soul. Really, I absolutely love writing them; they consume my days and nights – what can I say? But I am an avid film student, too: I watch a movie every night. Lawrence Osborne Read Quote