Jim Crace
Jim Crace
James "Jim" Craceis an award-winning English writer. His novels include Quarantine, which was judged Whitbread Novel of 1998, and Harvest, which won the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 March 1946
almost avoid bitterness bound deliver retiring
Retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product in almost every case.
asked books deliver drive people side van work
When people asked me what I did, I'd say, 'I work in publishing', and when they then say, 'What side of it?', I say, 'Supply' - no doubt leaving them to think I drive the books around in a van and deliver them.
aware driven hours less pregnant share suffer text wake writers
I'm very aware when I share a stage with other writers that I'm much less driven than they are. I don't wake up in the middle of the night, pregnant with paragraphs. I don't suffer for my text twenty-four hours a day.
narrative
I'm not a new-agey person, but narrative is ancient and wise and generous.
associated dull finding hold hysteria interested narrative normally religion taking truth
I'm interested in taking hold of the dull truth narrative and finding inside it the transcendence and spirituality and hysteria normally associated with religion.
money prizes validation
I know the money is important, but, actually, the validation of your career that prizes give is what you really want. But the money is fabulous, too.
I like shaped things. I like shape in things, and I do overshape things, it's true.
amateur area history natural says
Everyone says I should write a natural history or landscape book because if I have an area of amateur expertise, it is in those things.
natural writers
The celebrity sense of writers is something which is very tempting... But the enthusiasm comes from the fact that it's such a natural activity, storytelling.
believable good holding
I'm not good at dialogue. I'm not good at holding a mirror up at a real world. I'm not good at believable characterisation.
bitter moaning people writers
I'm not going to write any more novels. I don't want to end up being one of these angry, bitter writers moaning that only three people are reading him. I don't want that.
certainly
I liked journalism and thought it was important, certainly more important than fiction. I'd probably still be doing it if I hadn't been elbowed out.
invent spray
I invent words you think you've heard - spray hopper or swag beetle.
I never think of the reader. I am curious about things; I need to find out, so off I go.