Write something and leave it aside so you've practically forgotten it as much as possible, a month or so, then come back and read it as if you're reading it for the first time.
More Quotes by Christine Leunens
I think what happens is when you have fear, fear translates into hatred.
So I'm working on another historical novel. This one's a Franco-New Zealand novel, and it takes place at the time of the Rainbow Warrior bombing in New Zealand.
I wanted to really just understand... how could a whole generation of children who were just children at the time - boys riding their bikes, flying kites, and doing all kinds of things they normally do - how could they suddenly be taught a completely different curriculum?
Then it's very easy to point fingers at other people and use this kind of rhetoric, infestation and comparing people to rodents, insects, showing them as very undesirable people - not people who feel the same, who care about their families too, no, but as people who are different and less human, to dehumanize them.
It's not ideal when art is seen as just some passing entertainment quickly thrown out into the market, like a consumer object. You have to let things settle and think about them.
I was born 20 years after World War II had ended, and people of my generation mostly thought of it as a terrible period portrayed in documentaries you'd seen, flickering, in black and white.