Peter Carey Quotes

Quotes about:

• I had known loneliness before, and emptiness upon the moor, but I had never been a NOTHING, a nothing floating on a nothing, known by nothing, lonelier and colder than the space between the stars. It was more frightening than being dead.

  Peter Carey

  Stars, Loneliness, Space

  FaceBook post by Peter Carey from May 23, 2013

  46 Copy quote

• To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.

  Peter Carey

  Lonely, Art, Being Lonely

  Peter Carey (2010). “Oscar and Lucinda”, p.261, Faber & Faber

  24 Copy quote

• The declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.

  Peter Carey

  Real, Lying, Buttons

  1988 Oscar and Lucinda, ch.43,'Leviathan'.

  10 Copy quote

• People do not love those whose eyes show that they are somewhere else

  Peter Carey

  Love, Art, Eye

  Peter Carey (2010). “Collected Stories”, p.186, Faber & Faber

  15 Copy quote

• Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

  Peter Carey

  Pain, Past, Thinking

  "Peter Carey: making it up as he goes along" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. March 16, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

• My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before.

  Peter Carey

  Beautiful, Ambition, Mad

  "An Interview With Author Peter Carey". Interview with Ben Evans, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 6, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

• I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from.

  Peter Carey

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• Swimming always cleans your soul

  Peter Carey

  Swimming, Soul, Your Soul

  9 Copy quote

• I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.

  Peter Carey

  Novel

  "An Interview With Author Peter Carey". Interview with Ben Evans, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 6, 2010.

  10 Copy quote

• If you ever read one of my books I hope you'll think it looks so easy. In fact, I wrote those chapters 20 times over, and over, and over, and that if you want to write at a good level, you'll have to do that too.

  Peter Carey

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on.

  Peter Carey

  Earth, Cliffs, Firsts

  FaceBook post by Peter Carey from Oct 29, 2012

  9 Copy quote

• Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

  Peter Carey

  Writing, Talent, Teach

  "An Interview With Author Peter Carey". Interview with Ben Evans, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 6, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

• The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.

  Peter Carey

  Writing, Past, Giving

  "An Interview With Author Peter Carey". Interview with Ben Evans, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 6, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

• Our prime minister could embrace and forgive the people who killed our beloved sons and fathers, and so he should, but he could not, would not, apologise to the Aboriginal people for 200 years of murder and abuse. The battle against the Turks, he said in Gallipoli, was our history, our tradition. The war against the Aboriginals, he had already said at home, had happened long ago. The battle had made us; the war that won the continent was best forgotten

  Peter Carey

  Father, War, Home

  8 Copy quote

• I think that thing about the destruction of the world is there all the time, it's there every day when we look out the window.

  Peter Carey

  Thinking, Looks, World

  6 Copy quote

• I did not know that history is like a blood stain that keeps on showing on the wall no matter how many new owners take possession, no matter how many times we pint over it.

  Peter Carey

  Wall, Blood, Matter

  6 Copy quote

• I'm always the one with the activist friends. I've been an activist very little.

  Peter Carey

  Littles, Activist

  7 Copy quote

• I don't think you have the right to shout about other people's private life.

  Peter Carey

  Thinking, People, Private Life

  "Peter Carey: making it up as he goes along" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. March 16, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Then I fell in love and everything went to hell.

  Peter Carey

  Hell

  5 Copy quote

• At the very end of a book I can manage to work for longer stretches, but mostly, making stuff up for three hours, that's enough. I can't do any more. At the end of the day I might tinker with my morning's work and maybe write some again. But I think three hours is fine.

  Peter Carey

  Morning, Book, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• All our heroes, all our great stories are about failure.

  Peter Carey

  Hero, Stories, Crafts

  4 Copy quote

• I never base characters on real people. There are people who do that but I really don't know how to do it.

  Peter Carey

  Real, Character, People

  4 Copy quote

• I thought I would be an organic chemist. I went off to university, and when I couldn't understand the chemistry lectures I decided that I would be a zoologist, because zoologists seemed like life-loving people.

  Peter Carey

  People, Zoologist, Would Be

  13 Copy quote

• Living where I live New York I don't think anyone's going to make a fuss. But it is more deeply satisfying because it's of your place and means that you aren't forgotten; someone's noticed what you have been doing with your life.

  Peter Carey

  Art, New York, Mean

  7 Copy quote

• I went to work in 1962, and by '64 I was writing all the time, every night and every weekend. It didn't occur to me that, having read nothing and knowing nothing, I was in no position to write a book.

  Peter Carey

  Book, Writing, Weekend

  7 Copy quote

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