Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfieldis a British author whose 2006 debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale, became a New York Times No. 1 best-seller. It is written in the Gothic tradition, with echoes of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Her debut novel was turned into a television film...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth22 August 1964
fascinated lives nieces notice people selves stories
I see people as haunted by the selves they don't know... I don't have children, but I have nieces and nephews, and one thing I notice is how fascinated they are by stories of their lives before they can remember.
narrow respect serious trash
Excessively narrow reading is unhelpful, certainly. Reading only Serious Literature is no better than reading only trash in this respect.
easy longest sounds took trust
You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.
books heart home knew later life man says serious visited
My mother says that after I first visited the home of the man I later married, she knew it was serious when I told her, 'Mum, he has more books than me!' So, books are at the very heart of my life.
believed gave life necessary settled several since
For several decades, I believed it was necessary to be extraordinary if you wanted to write, and since I wasn't, I gave up my ambition and settled down to a life of reading.
garden good ideas ladder spend time wish
I am always happy up a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand. And I wish I had more time to spend in the garden - not least because I get good ideas for writing when I'm out there.
exploring led literary writers
My liking for Scandinavian crime fiction led me into exploring literary writers from the same countries.
diary hers kept since
I have kept a reading diary since I was 18. I am jealous of my friend who has kept hers since she was ten.
abandoning addictive consciousness ghost haunting influenced losing pleasure worlds
The addictive pleasure of abandoning yourself to a book, of losing consciousness of your worries, your body, and your surroundings, to become a ghost haunting other worlds has influenced me in many ways.
book believe important
I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing.
lonely
For it must be very lonely being dead.
dirty genius frail
My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.
art hands breathing
Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline's breathing.
stories might like-family
Everybody has a story. It's like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can't say you haven't got them. Same goes for stories.