Latest Ned Beauman Quotes from Interviews

• I guess the main thing I definitely don't enjoy is having a job which involves selling things. You become an author because you think you're good at writing. Not because you love to promote yourself. I enjoy some of it and I've had a really fun few years so basically I have nothing to complain about. But what I don't like is the thought that it's going to go on for the rest of my life.

  Ned Beauman

  Fun, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Statistically, you don't have much chance of becoming president if you're not tall and fairly handsome or at least conventional-looking.

  Ned Beauman

  President, Chance

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Most romances aren't swept aside by big historical events. Most romances in the history of the world fall apart because of other, smaller happenings. History can sometimes be in the background, the thing which instead of rupturing your life merely irritates you by pressing itself now and then into the foreground.

  Ned Beauman

  Fall, Romance, Historical

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• There are probably a couple of things I'd never write about until everyone I know is dead. And then there's other stuff which nobody would want to read a book about anyway.

  Ned Beauman

  Couple, Book, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Politicians often like to suggest that their policies come about through objective thinking, but if you look at British fascists, for example, what you see - what I see - is a group of people coming to the decisions they came to because something happened to them when they were nine-years-old, or because of some deep prejudice that formed in them subsequent to that.

  Ned Beauman

  Thinking, People, Decision

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• It seems to me that the basic plot of all historical novels is a romance swept aside by history.

  Ned Beauman

  Romance, Historical, Novel

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

  Ned Beauman

  Novel, Avoiding

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I hate going back over what I've written. It makes me feel physically sick.

  Ned Beauman

  Hate, Sick, I Hate

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• When I'm writing new material, I never have any trouble coming up with ideas.

  Ned Beauman

  Writing, Trouble

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I love sentences. I love characters. But most of all, perhaps, I love to work on plot, and that may be where my natural gifts lie, if I have any. I like to think hard about plots in TV shows and films.

  Ned Beauman

  Lying, Character, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Mystery, investigation, false leads, solution - we associate that structure with genre fiction, but it exists in our real lives, too. There's no reason why literary fiction shouldn't be able to acknowledge that and make it fresh.

  Ned Beauman

  Real, Mystery, Reason

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I never really have blank page syndrome. I don't get blocked. I have a plan for my novel before I start which, although incomplete, probably contains enough material for several novels by a quieter kind of writer. And I try to get my arms around that material and see where it takes me.

  Ned Beauman

  Trying, Kind, Enough

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The reason I start a novel is because there's something that excites me and I want to explore it.

  Ned Beauman

  Reason, Novel

  Source: www.guernicamag.com