Graham Swift
Graham Swift
Graham Colin Swift FRSLis an English writer. Born in London, England, he was educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth4 May 1949
doctors might fields
I had a fear of becoming anything, a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor, but if you become a doctor, that's your specialty in life and you are defined by it. One of the attractions of being a writer is that you're never a specialist. Your field is entirely open; your field is the entire human condition.
writing get-away impulse
Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself.
hate london feels
Of course there are times when I hate London, but equally there are times when I can walk 'round a corner and I really feel that this is my place.
book
I don't reread my books.
sound london
I respond to the sound of London being spoken - to the sound of London.
thinking ordinary extraordinary
I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it.
offering views people
If people read 'Tomorrow' and feel that it is offering them some view of my own household, they would be very, very wrong.
Happiness quells thought. And work quells thought.
mother memories children
My mother was a great bringer-up of children. My memories are of a sense of security and comfort.
opposites upbringing
My upbringing was absolutely not the archetypal writer's upbringing. Even, arguably, the opposite.
summer sky names
I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary.
country strong children
Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings?
people looks expecting
When people aren't expecting to be seen, they look their truest.
humble land progress
There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress. It doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away. It’s progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress I the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-ending retrieving what it lost. A dogged and vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn’t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.