Simon Mawer Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 25 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Simon Mawer.
Famous Quotes By Simon Mawer
Only occasionally do I read new fiction. Most of my reading is heavily dictated by what I'm writing at the time. — Simon Mawer
I'm fond of her."
Oh yeah? Fond are you? I've heard of fond. I expect old erection here" - she pointed to the tube of DNA - "was fond of his victim. Fond is a prude's word, Ben. You fancy her. That's what you say. You fancy Miss Library something painful. And who knows?" She grinned, gap-toothed, like the Wife of Bath. "Maybe she fancies you. — Simon Mawer
You can tell nothing from a man's appearance, nothing except the depths of your own prejudice. — Simon Mawer
Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome. — Simon Mawer
Numbers have no hidden meanings, you say. But it is the hidden meanings in words that make them so wonderful. — Simon Mawer
A work of art like this,' he tells one of the journalists, 'demands that the life lived in it be a work of art as well. I am certain that Viktor Landauer and his beautiful wife will do the place justice. — Simon Mawer
Reality is brutal or painful or frightening, but waiting is a distillate of fear that corrodes and dissolves. — Simon Mawer
Most of those people who saw themselves as literary types at university became bank managers. — Simon Mawer
When writing fiction, you only have to know enough to be convincing on the page. I mean really convincing, of course - but you don't need academic depth. — Simon Mawer
It is difficult to reconstruct an emotion. At times it is difficult even to admit to one. I have practiced long and hard at denying entry to such twin imposters as triumph and disaster, or love and hate, but sometimes the barriers are breached. — Simon Mawer
To be brave, you have to have a choice. — Simon Mawer
One of the reasons I wrote 'The Fall' is that climbing's more than a sport, it's a way of life. When you're in it, it's all you think about. — Simon Mawer
The shutter of the photographer's camera makes that repeated mechanical sound. That unlocking and locking of the doors of light to send momentary images of the present into the light trap of the past. — Simon Mawer
Grief and guilt. A powerful combination. Guilt like a liquid, a thin liquor, seeping everywhere, informing everything, saturating the whole-corrosive, like seawater, scented with the rich stench of ordure and corruption, and carrying with it hard, abrasive shards of grief. — Simon Mawer
All the answers you may wish for lie within faith, but it demands a complete and incontinent surrender, an immersion as total as any baptism. Indeed baptism is a kind of enactment of the surrender: you bathe in faith, you swim in it, you live by it, surrounded by it, buoyed up by it, engulfed by it. You drown in it, for at times it takes your breath away as entirely as any lungful of water ... All the answers lie in faith; and when you lose your faith you have no choice but to substitute for if a philosophy that deliberately and coldly offers no answers at all. — Simon Mawer
I was a boarding school product from the age of eight, and I hated it. Though I do have a theory that boarding school is good training for writers because it's so desperately lacking in privacy: you make space for yourself by having an interior life. — Simon Mawer
It is perfectly possible to believe two contradictory things at one and the same time - that is one of the brilliant faculties of the human mind. — Simon Mawer
Guernsey itself was overcrowded, but its cliffs were utterly empty. I spent a wonderful year with a friend, climbing them. It was sheer magic: you went from this pretty, busy village of an island to the sea cliffs and heard nothing but the gulls and the waves. — Simon Mawer
If God resides anywhere ... surely he shelters behind barricades of pure chance. — Simon Mawer
Faith is the enemy of discovery. — Simon Mawer
Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen. — Simon Mawer
She knows what it is to be sad and miserable, but those emotions are almost enjoyable. They throw moments of happiness and laughter into sharper relief. — Simon Mawer