Quotes – Page 2 – Annabel Smith

You’ve got the wrong idea of what writers do. They don’t understand any more than other people. They invent only plots they can…

…How easy it is, like coming home must once have been, for those who’d had homes. Walking through the doorway into the familiar,…

There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. The there’s what…

When they were younger, the exchange of words, of ideas, was important. But later, less so. He believes that the human body has…

How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists…

The most important thing of all in dialogue is not the text at all, but the subtext. That’s where the deeper meaning is…

I’m amazed at the ease with which we forget what we felt, what we wanted. The speed with which we assume that now…

Perhaps, the only fiction worth reading – the writing that ensnares you wholly, that lays siege to your heart – is that which…

Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn’t struck you….

The best thing I’ve done in recent years has been to… re-read certain books with dedication, with an old fidelity, as if something…

Annabel Smith