Writer Quotes by Pat Barker

“But I shot the dog myself. I took him into the barn holding on to his collar. He knew something bad was going to…

— Pat Barker

When I'm writing the first draft, I'm writing in a very slovenly way: anything to get the outline of the story on paper.

— Pat Barker

When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With…

— Pat Barker

That balance between involvement and detachment is what novelists do. It's the ideal relationship between a novelist and a character, I think, total involvement…

— Pat Barker

Murder is only killing in the wrong place.

— Pat Barker

The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn't mind. It didn't occur to him to move. This was the right place. This…

— Pat Barker

'Undertones of War' by Edmund Blunden seems to get less attention than the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, but it is a…

— Pat Barker

I don't think it's possible to c-call yourself a C-Christian and... and j-just leave out the awkward bits.' -Wilfred Owen

— Pat Barker

The way I see it, when you put the uniform on, in effect you sign a contract. And you don't back out of a…

— Pat Barker

“Half the world's work's done by hopeless neurotics.”

— Pat Barker

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars,

— Pat Barker

Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer.

— Pat Barker

My grandmother's first husband was a spiritualist medium. What fascinates me about that is the balance between conviction and sincerity and trickery, which is…

— Pat Barker

“It was... the Great White God de-throned, I suppose. Because we did, we quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That…

— Pat Barker

Sometimes, in the trenches, you get the sense of something, ancient. One trench we held, it had skulls in the side, embedded, like mushrooms.…

— Pat Barker