I’ve wanted to write a ghost story for years, and my main aim was to write the most frightening ghost story that I could think of. Michelle Paver Read Quote
There’s this whole thing of being two people. You are the person you want to be – the writer – and then there’s this weird other life of going on tour and talking about the writing. And that really is weird. Michelle Paver Read Quote
To get the feel of the polar night, I went back to Spitsbergen in winter. I went snowshoeing in the dark and experimented with headlamps and climbed a glacier in driving snow. Michelle Paver Read Quote
I saw myself as a trailblazer in the 1980s as a female lawyer in the City. It was exciting, as women were outnumbered by men five to one. But while I had this sense of trailblazing, in reality, I wasn’t pushing boundaries; it was just a personal myth I’d created, as I was doing a job I wasn’t enjoying. Michelle Paver Read Quote
Why do so many children love the idea of being snowed in or shipwrecked, of having to survive on one’s own? When I was a child, I was no exception. I wanted to hunt with a bow and arrow like the Stone Age people: to skin deer and build my own shelter. And I desperately wanted a wolf. As we lived in London, my options were limited. Michelle Paver Read Quote
It’s the little details I love. How to fletch your arrows with owl feathers, because owls fly silently, so maybe your arrows will, too. How to carry fire in a piece of smouldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which help a world come alive. Michelle Paver Read Quote
The most remote place I’ve been to was in Greenland. I remember setting out for a solo hike from a small cabin, itself several hours’ boat ride from the nearest settlement. Michelle Paver Read Quote
By about chapter six of ‘Wolf Brother,’ I was having so much fun that I knew I wanted it to go on and I couldn’t tell Torak’s story in one book. So I sat down, and it took me about a week to plan in broad outline all six books. Michelle Paver Read Quote
Indigenous people all over the world take quite a lot of trouble with their hair and their clothes. Michelle Paver Read Quote
When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he said no. I was a burnt-out litigation solicitor in my thirties, hating my life, and his cancer made me re-evaluate it all. Michelle Paver Read Quote
