Jim Crace

“I've been very lucky with prizes. But the thing about prizes is that, when you talk about a prize-winning author, you can be talking about one that is well-regarded but doesn't sell any books.”

“I invent words you think you've heard - spray hopper or swag beetle.”

“Narrative is so rich; it's given up so much.”

“I don't have any sense of an audience when I'm writing. I don't consider the audience. Because all I'm interested in is the problem on the page.”

“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.”

“I adore falseness. I don't want you to tell me accurately what happened yesterday. I want you to lie about it, to exaggerate, to entertain me.”

“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.”

“Writers who want to interfere with adaptations of their work are basically undemocratic. The book still stands as an entity on its own.”

“I stopped being an engaged journalist and became a disengaged novelist.”