What we wish upon the future is very often the image of some lost, imagined past. — Graham Swift Imagined Copy Share Image
“He was distrustful of happiness as some people fear heights or open spaces.” — Graham Swift Distrustful Copy Share Image
I respond to the sound of London being spoken - to the sound of London. — Graham Swift London Copy Share Image
I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it. — Graham Swift Begin Copy Share Image
Part of the very impulse of writing for me is actually wanting to get away from myself. — Graham Swift Get away Copy Share Image
When people aren't expecting to be seen, they look their truest. — Graham Swift Expecting Copy Share Image
There is a certain inescapable attachment. If you are born somewhere and circumstances don't take you away from it, then you grow… — Graham Swift Attachment Copy Share Image
“When it comes down to it, Matthew was just another disillusioned idealist, an over-reactive Hamlet type--couldn't take it that the world was… — Graham Swift Disillusioned Copy Share Image
I'm not a writer who looks for the fantastic and the sensational. I like the world we've got. If there is anything… — Graham Swift Anything Copy Share Image
And I didn't know I loved her till I'd dreamt of her. I didn't know it was the real thing until an… — Graham Swift Dreamt Copy Share Image
London is like no other city I know in its ability to become beautiful. You can suddenly turn a corner and there… — Graham Swift Ability Copy Share Image
If people read 'Tomorrow' and feel that it is offering them some view of my own household, they would be very, very… — Graham Swift Feels Copy Share Image
I can do hieroglyphics in the margin. There are days when I really enjoy the flow of ink. I mean, nice pen,… — Graham Swift Can do Copy Share Image
“It makes you feel sort of cheap and titchy. Like it's looking down at you, saying, I'm Canterbury Cathedral, who the hell… — Graham Swift Cathedral Copy Share Image
“Hamlet's mother says to Hamlet, "Why seems it so particular with thee?" What is the difference between belief and make-belief? What makes… — Graham Swift Belief Copy Share Image
Children, be curious. Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops. Nothing is more repressive than the repression of curiosity.… — Graham Swift Children Copy Share Image
That's the way it is: life inculdes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth… — Graham Swift Empty Copy Share Image
The novel that's contemporary in the sense of being wholly 'of now' is an impossibility, if only because novels may take years… — Graham Swift Because Copy Share Image
If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of… — Graham Swift Alive Copy Share Image
I had a fear of becoming anything, a fear of becoming a specialist. I might have become a doctor, but if you… — Graham Swift Attraction Copy Share Image
“I taught you that there is never any end to that question, because, as I once defined it for you (yes, I… — Graham Swift History Copy Share Image
As a novelist, I suppose I can say that I'm highly articulate. But I know, as a person, in other ways, I'm… — Graham Swift Articulate Copy Share Image
Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the… — Graham Swift Acts of violence Copy Share Image
“There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress, it doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away.… — Graham Swift Building Copy Share Image
Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me… — Graham Swift Animal Copy Share Image
Pillow talk. It's how you know, it's how you tell, that something different, something special is happening: that this might even be… — Graham Swift Body Copy Share Image
“The oak was, of course, a great stealer of the surrounding pasture—its only value to provide shade for the livestock—but it was… — Graham Swift First time Copy Share Image
“But this would have been to ignore the young man of only twenty-five, who, for all his, by now, increasing and debilitating… — Graham Swift God Copy Share Image
“Literature, after all, from Homer onwards, is littered with the recounting of deaths and with the fascination for death, and in this… — Graham Swift Books Copy Share Image
“And as for the Ellison Fellow's feelings towards Katherine Potter--to be honest, they involve a good deal of confusion. He reacts before… — Graham Swift Ellison Copy Share Image
Today's news, which may be yesterday's anyway, will be eclipsed tomorrow. — Graham Swift May Copy Share Image
When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading. — Graham Swift Character Copy Share Image
“And books, she knew by then, were one of the necessities, the rocks of her life.” — Graham Swift Books Copy Share Image
“How we forgive narrowness of mind, when it accompanies largeness of heart. Yet no breadth of intellect exonerates want of feeling.” — Graham Swift Forgive Copy Share Image
