Jim Crace Quotes

Powerful Jim Crace for Daily Growth

About Jim Crace

Jim Crace, a contemporary British novelist, was born on March 14, 1946, in Fazakerley, Liverpool, England. He spent his early years in the suburbs of Manchester before moving to London to study at Queen Mary College, University of London. Crace's writing career began when he started working as a scriptwriter for BBC Radio Drama, a role that provided him with an understanding of narrative structure and the nuances of language. Crace's first novel, "The Path of Great Happiness" (1987), was a semi-autobiographical account of his life in Manchester, but it was his subsequent works that truly established him as a significant voice in contemporary literature. His second novel, "Continent" (1986), marked the beginning of his exploration of human fragility and the complexities of human relationships within the context of history and nature. Crace's most celebrated work, "Harvest" (1992), is a masterful narrative about love, loss, and survival set in a small farming community on the brink of disappearance. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is considered one of his most significant works. In 2008, Crace announced that he would be retiring from writing, stating that he had written all the novels he wanted to write. However, in 2013, he released "The Pesthouse," a post-apocalyptic novel about survival and human connection. Crace's works are characterized by their rich language, deep human insights, and profound explorations of the human condition. His novels, often set in rural communities, explore themes such as love, loss, community, and the passage of time. Crace's writing has been praised for its poetic language, intricate plots, and deeply human stories. Despite his retirement, Jim Crace remains a significant figure in contemporary British literature.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"Everyone is a story waiting to be told."

This quote by Jim Crace suggests that each individual carries an untold narrative - their unique journey, experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Every person's life is a rich tapestry of stories waiting to be explored, understood, and shared. This perspective encourages empathy, as it highlights the importance of listening to others' stories and recognizing the depth and complexity in every life.

"Love is what makes us human, every tiny bit of it, and that's what makes us worth more than anything else on earth."

Jim Crace's quote emphasizes the unique and profound value of love in human existence. He suggests that love, in its smallest expressions, is an inherent quality that defines our humanity and sets us apart from other entities on earth. In essence, he posits that the capacity to love makes us worth more than anything else in the world, underscoring the transformative and elevating power of love in human experience.

"They are the ones who know their own endings, though they can't see them yet, and they're already here, among us."

This quote by Jim Crace suggests that certain individuals, despite not being aware of it yet, are living their final chapters even as we interact with them. These people are among us in the present, moving through life unknowingly toward an eventual conclusion. It's a profound observation about the transient nature of human existence and the uncertainty surrounding our futures.

"There is a great deal of difference between knowing the name of something and knowing it."

This quote emphasizes that mere knowledge of facts (the name of something) does not equate to true understanding or wisdom about a subject. Only through experiential learning, personal exploration, and critical reflection can one truly know something in a meaningful way.

"In time, stories do not so much change as ossify, becoming fixed in the minds of those who hear them often enough."

This quote suggests that stories, over time, tend to solidify or harden into a specific form, shaped by frequent repetition among those who listen to them. The essence is that stories, once told many times, may lose their original flexibility and complexity, becoming more rigid in the understanding of listeners due to familiarity. This can lead to a standardized or stereotyped perception of these stories, limiting their potential for evolution and adaptability.

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

- Jim Crace

Gift, Afternoon, Flock, Geese

There is no reason why the Louvre should be your favourite gallery just because it has the grandest collections in France, any more than Kew should necessarily be a favourite garden because it has the largest assemblage of plants, or Tesco your chosen shop because it has the widest variety of canned beans.

- Jim Crace

Reason, Largest, Shop, Canned

The Commonwealth Prize is about celebrating the Commonwealth and the special relationship we have with the ex-colonies - which is part guilt and part warmth - and the Booker Prize isn't an essential part of that, but it is part of that.

- Jim Crace

Guilt, Which, Essential Part, Warmth

I'm a very secretive person.

- Jim Crace

Person, Very, Secretive

Try pitching a story of happiness to your editors, and their toes are going to curl up.

- Jim Crace

Happiness, Try, Going, Curl

I'm interested in taking hold of the dull truth narrative and finding inside it the transcendence and spirituality and hysteria normally associated with religion.

- Jim Crace

Finding, Inside, Narrative, Hysteria

I'm not thinking when I'm writing, 'How's this going to read?' Or, 'What percentage of the audience is going to stay with me?' The thing itself is what gives me pleasure. Sometimes stuff just falls onto the page so beautifully and happily that it's deeply satisfying. It's selfish!

- Jim Crace

Thinking, Sometimes, How, Percentage

I invent words you think you've heard - spray hopper or swag beetle.

- Jim Crace

Think, Beetle, Invent, Spray

Storytelling enables us to play out decisions before we make them, to plan routes before we take them, to work out the campaign before we start the war, to rehearse the phrases we're going to use to please or placate our wives and husbands.

- Jim Crace

Play, Storytelling, Before, Routes

The problems of the world are not going to be engaged with and solved in Faversham, they're going to be sorted out in cities like Birmingham.

- Jim Crace

Going, Engaged, Cities, Sorted

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.

- Jim Crace

Play, Been, Almost Everyone, Towels

Sixteen years as a freelance features journalist taught me that neither the absence of 'the Muse' nor the presence of 'the block' should be allowed to hinder the orderly progress of a book.

- Jim Crace

Book, Absence, Allowed, Orderly

For all the splendours of the world's greatest galleries, visitors are likely to be kept at arm's length, spectators of a world that can seem too rarefied to let them in.

- Jim Crace

Length, Them, Likely, Spectators

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.

- Jim Crace

Trust, Boulder, Your, Fills

My dad didn't have a formal education, but he had a wonderful vocabulary. So in 'Harvest,' I wanted my main character to be an innately intelligent man who would have the vocabulary to say whatever he wanted in the same way as lots of working-class people can.

- Jim Crace

Education, Working-Class, Main Character

As a natural historian, I don't believe in the consciousness of rocks or the opinions of rainbows or the convictions of slugs.

- Jim Crace

Natural, Consciousness, Convictions

I have tested my nerve by reaching a little too closely toward a lengthy alligator on the Gulf Coast and a saucer-sized tarantula in a Houston car park.

- Jim Crace

Alligator, Tested, Closely, Gulf Coast

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.

- Jim Crace

Tone, Express, About, Writes

Good old-fashioned, puritanical work guilt is, for me, a better colleague than any Muse. If I reach my weekly word target by Friday afternoon, then the weekend is guilt-free.

- Jim Crace

Work, Guilt, Puritanical, Friday

Narrative has been part of human consciousness for a long time. And if it has played a part in all those thousands of years, it will know a trick or two. It will be wise. It will be mischievous. It will be helpful. It will be generous.

- Jim Crace

Will, Been, Mischievous, Thousands Of Years

While we're having all these debates about how the book is being destroyed by the Kindle, we have to remember that narrative will not be affected at all because it's part of our makeup as a creature on this planet.

- Jim Crace

Makeup, Will, Having, Debates

I feel the political failings of the U.S.A. are presidential in length, but the aspirant narrative of the States is millennial in length.

- Jim Crace

Feel, Narrative, Length, Presidential

The most I have to fear while hiking in Warwickshire and Worcestershire, the two historic British counties closest to my city home in Birmingham, is whether or not the mud awaiting me in the narrow lanes ahead is deep enough to foul my socks.

- Jim Crace

Deep, City, Ahead, Closest

After 25 years sitting on my own in a room, I was looking for a more companionable job and wanted to work more collaboratively. I've also been very lucky in my career, with good advances and multibook deals. But there is some extent to which I worried that I was writing for the contract and not for the impulse of the thing itself.

- Jim Crace

Lucky, Very, Extent, Impulse

As a Midlander and a big walker, I'd always loved ridge and furrow fields, the plough-marked land as it was when it was enclosed. It is the landscape giving you a story of lives that ended with the arrival of sheep.

- Jim Crace

Big, Always, Lives, Walker

Because I'm a walker, natural history is my subject; I've always been obsessed with landscape, and I have an elegiac tone in most of my books.

- Jim Crace

Always, Been, Obsessed, Walker

I felt that, in some ways, my novels lacked heart because of the distance between me and the subject matter. But no one wants to read a book based on good health, a happy upbringing, a long marriage.

- Jim Crace

Distance, Some, Subject, Novels

I'm not going to write any more novels. I don't want to end up being one of these angry, bitter writers moaning that only three people are reading him. I don't want that.

- Jim Crace

Want, More, Going, Novels

You stand beneath the arthritic boughs of any English oak, and you survey a thousand tales.

- Jim Crace

English, Survey, Beneath, Oak

I'm very aware when I share a stage with other writers that I'm much less driven than they are. I don't wake up in the middle of the night, pregnant with paragraphs. I don't suffer for my text twenty-four hours a day.

- Jim Crace

Wake Up, Other, Very, Paragraphs

I am not - thank heavens - one of those 'driven' writers who spend a fortnight buckled with empty fright over an untouched page only to wake at two in the morning feverish with paragraphs.

- Jim Crace

Over, Untouched, Writers, Paragraphs

I liked journalism and thought it was important, certainly more important than fiction. I'd probably still be doing it if I hadn't been elbowed out.

- Jim Crace

Doing, Still, Certainly, Journalism

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.

- Jim Crace

Comparison, More, Dangerous, Frightened

Writers who want to interfere with adaptations of their work are basically undemocratic. The book still stands as an entity on its own.

- Jim Crace

Work, Want, Still, Interfere

I should have been kinder when I was younger.

- Jim Crace

Younger, Been, Should, Kinder

Even though my brother and I loved scrumping - we loved the act of climbing trees and grabbing fruit - there was always fear we would be caught. We feared we'd be imprisoned, sent to Australia.

- Jim Crace

Always, Caught, Though, Grabbing

I've never scared anybody in my life.

- Jim Crace

My Life, Never, Anybody, Scared

My tongue is what I used instead of my fists because I was a small and cowardly young man. Amusing people with stories and being bizarre with words was my way of getting out of fixes.

- Jim Crace

Small, Stories, Fists, Amusing

I come from a working-class background where I was much more likely to read socialist books and leaflets than Bronte or Dickens - neither of whom I've yet read.

- Jim Crace

Working-Class, Likely, Read, Dickens

I've never finished anything by Dickens.

- Jim Crace

Never, Anything, Finished, Dickens

I adore falseness. I don't want you to tell me accurately what happened yesterday. I want you to lie about it, to exaggerate, to entertain me.

- Jim Crace

Want, Tell, Entertain, I Want You

Privately, I'm thrilled with what I do, but publicly, I hold it in disdain.

- Jim Crace

Hold, Publicly, Privately, Thrilled

When the narrative itself starts knocking on the glassed-in box that was your prescription for how you were going to write this novel... you have to listen to it.

- Jim Crace

Box, Going, Narrative, Knocking

I was sick and tired of reading other people's epigraphs. They all seemed to be in ancient Greek, middle French or, when they were translated, they never seemed to relate to the book at hand. Basically, they seemed to be there just to baffle you and to impress you with how smart the writer is.

- Jim Crace

Book, Sick, Other, French

I know the money is important, but, actually, the validation of your career that prizes give is what you really want. But the money is fabulous, too.

- Jim Crace

Career, Want, Give, Prizes

I've been very lucky with prizes. But the thing about prizes is that, when you talk about a prize-winning author, you can be talking about one that is well-regarded but doesn't sell any books.

- Jim Crace

Lucky, Been, Very, Prizes

When I was a youngster, I was brought up in a very political background on an estate in north London.

- Jim Crace

London, Very, Brought, Youngster

I want to live in a city where the future is being mapped out.

- Jim Crace

Future, City, Want, Mapped

If I talk about my father's funeral, as I did when I was promoting the last novel, 'Being Dead,' I'm not going to tell any lies, but there are certain things I'm not going to tell you, and I'm certainly not going to tell my grief.

- Jim Crace

Father, Tell, About, Novel

Even though the method of 'Harvest' was a historical novel, its intentions were that of a modern novel. I'm asking you to think about land being seized in Brazil by soya barons. It's also a novel about immigration.

- Jim Crace

Harvest, Think, Immigration, Novel

You can't sing baritone when you're a soprano.

- Jim Crace

You, Sing, Baritone, Soprano

I offer detailed but mostly invented narratives about the provenance of my books.

- Jim Crace

Offer, Mostly, Narratives, Invented

Retiring from writing is not to retire from life.

- Jim Crace

Life, Writing, Retiring, Retire

I know my 17-year-old self would read my bourgeois fiction, full of metaphors and rhythmic prose, with a sinking heart.

- Jim Crace

Bourgeois, Prose, Read, Sinking

All the uncontrollable and unpredictable parts of my life - from the actual creation to my emotional responses to the finished book - I've succeeded in banishing to the office. And I think I'm happier for it.

- Jim Crace

My Life, Think, Actual, Creation

I'm not good at dialogue. I'm not good at holding a mirror up at a real world. I'm not good at believable characterisation.

- Jim Crace

Mirror, World, Holding, Believable

I'm an atheist - a good old North Korean-style atheist.

- Jim Crace

Good, Old, North, Atheist

I stopped being an engaged journalist and became a disengaged novelist.

- Jim Crace

Engaged, Journalist, Became, Novelist

Writing careers are short. For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely privileged.

- Jim Crace

Career, Hundred, Immensely, Published

Inside, Penlee House is without pretension. It is a space that knows its limitations and its strengths - and makes the most of them.

- Jim Crace

Strengths, Most, Makes, Limitations

I'd dearly love to write a political book that changed the hearts and minds of men and women.

- Jim Crace

Love, Book, Minds, Hearts

I was brought up in a flat in North London - virtually the last building in London, because north of us was countryside all the way to the coast, and south of us was non-stop London for 20 miles.

- Jim Crace

London, Last, Brought, Countryside

I have, I must admit, despised the English countryside for much of my life - despised it and avoided it for its want of danger and adventure.

- Jim Crace

My Life, Despised, Countryside

Retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product in almost every case.

- Jim Crace

Career, Inevitable, Which, Retiring

The western view of Christ is usually of a stainless being with fair hair who appears to have come from Oslo.

- Jim Crace

Christ, Come, Appears, Oslo

When people asked me what I did, I'd say, 'I work in publishing', and when they then say, 'What side of it?', I say, 'Supply' - no doubt leaving them to think I drive the books around in a van and deliver them.

- Jim Crace

Think, Van, Side, Publishing

I have in the past acquired a reputation for concocting non-existent writers and unwritten volumes.

- Jim Crace

Past, In The Past, Volumes, Acquired

Everyone says I should write a natural history or landscape book because if I have an area of amateur expertise, it is in those things.

- Jim Crace

Natural, Everyone, Area, Expertise

I'm not a new-agey person, but narrative is ancient and wise and generous.

- Jim Crace

Wise, Person, Narrative, Generous

There's a convention that books are mirrors of the real world, but our fact-obsessed age also wants fiction to be factually based and trustworthy.

- Jim Crace

Mirrors, Convention, Based, Trustworthy

English politics is so much more concerned with the proprieties than with defending dogmas.

- Jim Crace

Politics, More, Concerned, Defending

In the U.K., a lot of writers won't show up to support activist issues because they figure they're already repairing the world. I don't want to be one of those people.

- Jim Crace

Want, Show, Figure, Activist

I'm not that well-versed in literary theory - I don't know what it is.

- Jim Crace

Know, Literary, Theory

I don't have a constituency, and I'm not autobiographical in any way. I write these deeply moral books in a country which would prefer irony to anything with a moral tone.

- Jim Crace

Country, Which, Prefer, Autobiographical

When a book goes well, it abandons me. I am the most abandoned writer in the world.

- Jim Crace

Book, Goes, Am, Abandoned

I've got a big, long list of stuff you're entitled to hate about my books.

- Jim Crace

Big, About, Entitled, List

I don't have any sense of an audience when I'm writing. I don't consider the audience. Because all I'm interested in is the problem on the page.

- Jim Crace

Audience, Sense, Any, Page

Part of me feels that I'm letting people down by not being as interesting as my books.

- Jim Crace

Part, Feels, Books, Letting

Narrative is so rich; it's given up so much.

- Jim Crace

Rich, Up, Given, Narrative

I never think of the reader. I am curious about things; I need to find out, so off I go.

- Jim Crace

Curious, Think, Need, Reader

I didn't go to university straight after school. I went at night.

- Jim Crace

School, Night, Straight, University

Humankind has been telling stories forever and will be telling stories forever.

- Jim Crace

Been, Stories, Telling, Humankind

I like shaped things. I like shape in things, and I do overshape things, it's true.

- Jim Crace

Like, Shape, Things, Shaped

Lots of people hate my stuff.

- Jim Crace

Hate, People, Stuff, Lots

The celebrity sense of writers is something which is very tempting... But the enthusiasm comes from the fact that it's such a natural activity, storytelling.

- Jim Crace

Celebrity, Very, Which, Activity

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