British - Novelist | July 3, 1975 -
Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.
Matt Haig
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You have to be good. And keep getting better. For every writer taken on, another is dropped. A paradox: you have to rise to stay level.
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My mum always said I devoured 'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe' at the tender age of four, but frankly, I think that might be a touch of maternal exaggeration.
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British culture is very cynical sometimes of overt displays of sentimentality, and I think that becomes almost a suspicion of emotion, or a suspicion of someone making a grand statement. It is always easier to be ironic, or 'meta', or coolly postmodern. But I think there is such a thing as authentic sentimentality.
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People, certainly in the U.K., look down on screenwriting as an art form, but I love the discipline of it. Next to the bagginess of novel writing, it almost feels like a martial art.
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Parents can only do what they think is best, with the experience they have. The learning curve for every parent is that there's a limit to how much they can shield children from.
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Words are the essence of culture. Books are pure essence. They are not for women or for men, but for all of us. Without books, civilisation falls into the dark ages.
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Robots are great. I am saying that now so that when a future civilization of robots takes us captive, they will search through the 'Guardian' web archive and realise I said, 'Robots are great,' and then they'll choose to save me.
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The aim of any writer, even a fantasy writer, is the pursuit of truth.
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I think maths is the root of everything. If we understood every area of math, it would lead to improving our sense of science, physics, engineering, space travel... all those great things. Maths is a backbone for it.
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I'm not anti-progress, obviously, but I just think progress needs to be a broader thing than just the technology we can create; it's also how we handle it and our level of awareness.
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For me, as a writer, I desperately want to be read. I'm very conscious of readers as I'm writing. I think, 'If you write for yourself, then why don't you just keep it under the bed,' so I definitely write for other people.
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