I share my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so… — Graham Swift Bird Copy Share Image
All nature's creatures join to express nature's purpose. Somewhere in their mounting and mating, rutting and butting is the very secret of… — Graham Swift Animals Copy Share Image
“Why is it that every so often history demands a bloodbath, a holocaust, an Armageddon? And why is it that every time… — Graham Swift History Copy Share Image
How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same time it's so slow and sweet and everlasting. — Graham Swift Everlasting Copy Share Image
There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on--a more reliable world in so far… — Graham Swift Doe Copy Share Image
There's an undeniable thrill in seeing what's most current in our lives offered back to us in fictional guise, but it soon… — Graham Swift Adventure Copy Share Image
My mother was a great bringer-up of children. My memories are of a sense of security and comfort. — Graham Swift Children Copy Share Image
In my work you often get an abrupt shift in time, a jolt. But the emotional logic will take the reader on.… — Graham Swift Abrupt Copy Share Image
All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of… — Graham Swift Book Copy Share Image
I am struck by the way people behave on the Tube. They look at each other beadily and inquisitively, and something goes… — Graham Swift Animal Copy Share Image
Structure that really pays off is all based on emotion. I don't write down an elaborate plan. It's really done by feel.… — Graham Swift Areas Copy Share Image
Structure that really pays off is all based on emotion. I don't write down an elaborate plan. It's really done by feel.… — Graham Swift Area Copy Share Image
One of the things that probably drew me to writing was that it was something you could get on with by yourself.… — Graham Swift Activity Copy Share Image
It can be dismaying, all the same, for a novelist to compare the slowness of the writing with the speed of the… — Graham Swift Barely Copy Share Image
“A friend of his entered the restaurant, looking too, for whatever reason, a little frail. The was an exchange of token 'how… — Graham Swift Friendship Copy Share Image
There's no such thing as the contemporary novel. Before I seem the complete reactionary, let me add that I've happily joined in… — Graham Swift About Copy Share Image
“Life goes on. It doesn't go on. Yes, yes, I know, all we want in the end, we living, breathing creatures (am… — Graham Swift Faith Copy Share Image
Of course there are times when I hate London, but equally there are times when I can walk 'round a corner and… — Graham Swift Feels Copy Share Image
When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in… — Graham Swift Air Copy Share Image
Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying… — Graham Swift Mad Copy Share Image
What does education do, what does it have to offer, when deprived of its necessary partner, the future, and face instead with… — Graham Swift Doe Copy Share Image
Novels, in my experience, are slow in coming, and once I've begun them I know I have years rather than months of… — Graham Swift Books Copy Share Image
My upbringing was absolutely not the archetypal writer's upbringing. Even, arguably, the opposite. — Graham Swift Opposites Copy Share Image
I do my thinking while I walk. It just loosens up the mind in the way that you don't get when you… — Graham Swift Desks Copy Share Image
People die when curiosity goes.People have to find out, people have to know. How can there be any true revolution till we… — Graham Swift Curiosity Copy Share Image
The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To… — Graham Swift Amazing things Copy Share Image
I like the world we've got. If there is anything special and magical, I have to find it in the ordinary stuff. — Graham Swift Ifs Copy Share Image
The e-book does seem at the moment to threaten the livelihood of writers, because the way in which writers are paid for… — Graham Swift Air Copy Share Image
“Those TV pictures had looked like scenes from hell. Flames leaping up into the night. Even so, cattle aren’t people. Just a… — Graham Swift Turned Telly Copy Share Image
You may have your suspicions, your fears, you may even believe there is something, somewhere, terribly, drastically wrong, but because someone else… — Graham Swift Believe Copy Share Image
Ah, children, pity level-crossing keepers, pity lock-keepers - pity lighthouse-keepers - pity all the keepers of this world (pity even school teachers),… — Graham Swift Bleak Copy Share Image
I tend to begin with what you might call the very small world of personal life. But I am certainly interested in… — Graham Swift Am Copy Share Image
“Not all of it was done by soldiers, or by men. She’d shut her eyes and run her fingers over Jack’s shoulders,… — Graham Swift Blind Copy Share Image
I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was… — Graham Swift Artistic Copy Share Image
Unfortunately writers take a very small part of the profit on their books, and I think in the e-book world there is… — Graham Swift About Copy Share Image
I think the purveyors of e-books are only too happy for this atmosphere of 'everything belongs to everybody' to increase because it… — Graham Swift Atmosphere Copy Share Image
The pen is very quick for getting stuff from your brain to the page. I can do hieroglyphics in the margin. There… — Graham Swift Brain Copy Share Image
“His mother is dead, yet she has never not been, in theory, at his shoulder. He wants her not to have known… — Graham Swift Death Copy Share Image
The idea of stopping is not unmeaningful to me. I think there might be a time when, in theory at least, you'd… — Graham Swift Again Copy Share Image
