“Regulations. The city, the country, probably the whole world (having travelled little, Tomáš is unsure about the matter) is pinned down by regulations. His own view is that regulations are designed to control the future and if we all live… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
I was a boarding school product from the age of eight, and I hated it. Though I do have a theory that boarding school… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Guernsey itself was overcrowded, but its cliffs were utterly empty. I spent a wonderful year with a friend, climbing them. It was sheer magic:… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
You can tell nothing from a man's appearance, nothing except the depths of your own prejudice. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
When you look around now we have the war on terror. Yes, okay, the World Trade Center was sort of like a single act… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
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… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
When writing fiction, you only have to know enough to be convincing on the page. I mean really convincing, of course - but you… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Only occasionally do I read new fiction. Most of my reading is heavily dictated by what I'm writing at the time. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
“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… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Most of those people who saw themselves as literary types at university became bank managers. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
“Numbers have no hidden meanings, you say. But it is the hidden meanings in words that make them so wonderful.” — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
“It wasn’t the way that Viktor and Katalin looked at each other, it was the way they didn’t look. It wasn’t the notes, it… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
“It is difficult to reconstruct an emotion. At times it is difficult even to admit to one. I have practiced long and hard at… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
