Jane Gardam Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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If only one in 1,000 people that I talk to goes on to write a good book, that's one more good book that I've helped along... and maybe it will be a book I love myself five or 10 years down the line.
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Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?
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A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
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I've grown up with girls that are like Precious. I've grown up with people that are like everyone that I read about in that book. And so years later, when I was given the role, I just felt a huge responsibility to show the reality of that situation and to show that we're not making it up.
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The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
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I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'
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The problem with writing a monthly book is that you're going through your work like a man running for a bus, red-faced and out of breath. There isn't time for reflection or critical self-examination.
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One half who graduate from college never read another book.
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After 20 years, a million written words, and nine rejected novels, I finally landed a book contract.
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There aren't as many girl superheroes, but there are cool ones. Banshee, for instance.
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I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.
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I'm basically a know-it-all, and I'm writing a book about it. I want it to be called 'Danson on Water' and have me on the cover in this Christlike pose, standing on the water.
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I know from an editor's point of view or a publisher's point of view it's easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I'd be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.
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The issue of doing an adaptation of a book is the theater of the mind, and so you always face that.
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I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.
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We should all feel confident in our intelligence. By the way, intelligence to me isn't just being book-smart or having a college degree; it's trusting your gut instincts, being intuitive, thinking outside the box, and sometimes just realizing that things need to change and being smart enough to change it.
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For me, any book I'm writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before.
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A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
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You ever buy a book and not read it? You feel almost guilty having it up on a bookshelf. People are like, "Hey, how's that book?" "I haven't read it." "Oh, did you just buy it?" "I've had it since high school." "Well, can I borrow it?" "No."
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Something will be offensive to someone in every book, so you've got to fight it.
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I don't feel like my job is to be beloved.
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What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life, you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called 'cliche.'
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Jesus never gave advice
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I can't write the same book over and over again... let it go, once it's gone!
