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
fall other-worlds doe
There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on--a more reliable world in so far as it does not hide that its premise is illusion.
real illusion real-things
And I didn't know I loved her till I'd dreamt of her. I didn't know it was the real thing until an illusion had signalled it.
children people curiosity
Children, be curious. Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops. Nothing is more repressive than the repression of curiosity. Curiosity begets love. It weds us to the world. It's part of our perverse, madcap love for this impossible planet we inhabit. People die when curiosity goes. People have to find out, people have to know.
children memories fall
Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life.
people curiosity intellectual-curiosity
People die when curiosity goes.
writing cells long
If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive-then don't be a writer.
book taken air
When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it.
memories night years
Pillow talk. It's how you know, it's how you tell, that something different, something special is happening: that this might even be the most important night of your life. Some day -some night- I hope you both may know it, with whoever it may be: the wish, stealing up on you, not to just merge bodies, but all you have, all your years, all your memories up to that point. And why should you wish to do that, if you haven't already guessed that your future too, will be shared?
trust believe doubt
You may have your suspicions, your fears, you may even believe there is something, somewhere, terribly, drastically wrong, but because someone else is in charge, because there is a part of the system above you which you don't know, you don't question it, you even distrust your own doubts.
thinking mind sitting
I do my thinking while I walk. It just loosens up the mind in the way that you don't get when you are sitting at a desk.
yesterday today news
Today's news, which may be yesterday's anyway, will be eclipsed tomorrow.
beautiful cities weather
London is like no other city I know in its ability to become beautiful. You can suddenly turn a corner and there are odd moments - of light, of weather.
people curiosity revolution
People die when curiosity goes.People have to find out, people have to know. How can there be any true revolution till we know what we're made of? 830
book mean thinking
I think the purveyors of e-books are only too happy for this atmosphere of 'everything belongs to everybody' to increase because it means they don't have to think so much about the original maker of the thing, or they can get away with paying them less.