We're all blemished. Yet we do love and are loved.

More Quotes by Jim Crace

When you start a novel, it is always like pushing a boulder uphill. Then, after a while, to mangle the metaphor, the boulder fills with helium and becomes a balloon that carries you the rest of the way to the top. You just have to hold your nerve and trust to narrative.

For 'The Gift of Stones,' I spent an afternoon chasing a flock of Canadian geese.

Almost everyone who's been to primary school in Britain has had towels put on their heads to play the shepherds in the nativity play.

There is no comparison. The American landscape is so much more dangerous. They have real snakes, mountain lions, bears; we only have adders, and they're more frightened of us than we are of them.

If you read the fables, 'Beowulf,' for example, you will know something about the person who writes them, and I like that. Secondly, they will not be about individuals; they will be about community. Thirdly, they're all about moralizing. Fourthly, the way they express themselves takes its tone from the oral tradition.

I'm a matter-of-fact, office-hours writer.