Eleanor Catton Quotes

Author Image

Eleanor Catton

Profession : Author

Birth : September 24, 1985

I highlight everything I find interesting, and then type out everything I've highlighted, and then print out everything I've typed, and reread these printed notes as often as possible.

Eleanor Catton

It is less fun to talk about what I am feeling rather than what I am thinking. Saying 'I feel awesome' isn't really interesting or enquiring.

Eleanor Catton

The zodiac is a system a person can play with and see meaning in.

Eleanor Catton

The nice thing about the zodiac as a system is it is quite comprehensive as a range of impulses and psychological states it can speak about.

Eleanor Catton

I often feel intellectually frustrated when I'm in a position where I'm not moving forward; when I'm not enquiring about something.

Eleanor Catton

One of the things I really like about Victorian novels is the close anatomisation of character. People's gestures and mannerisms and the quality of their thought is very closely identified and analysed.

Eleanor Catton

The readership of Victorian novels, when they were published, was much less diverse. People were probably white, and had enough money to be literate. Very often, there are phrases in Italian, German and French that are left untranslated.

Eleanor Catton

An interesting thing about New Zealand, you know, literature is that it really didn't begin in any real sense until the 20th century.

Eleanor Catton

The challenge that I set for myself was to see whether or not plot and structure could coexist, and why it was that we had to always privilege one above the other.

Eleanor Catton

I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve.

Eleanor Catton

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

Eleanor Catton

The books that really made an impact on me were not set in New Zealand. Some were New Zealand novels, but the New Zealandness of them was not what carried me or excited me.

Eleanor Catton

I much prefer a plotted novel to a novel that is really conceptual.

Eleanor Catton

I had never read Victorian novels before going overseas. I read a handful of authors, but I had not immersed myself in the literature of the 19th century.

Eleanor Catton

I can feel the public side of my life and the private side of my life sort of drifting away from one another.

Eleanor Catton

It's very brave going from a position of authority to one where you are an apprentice.

Eleanor Catton

You can tell when a writer moves out of a place of struggle and into a place of comfort, and it's always a bad thing.

Eleanor Catton

Is the prestige conferred by the Man Booker prize for the book or me? I would prefer it on the book and for me to be treated ordinarily.

Eleanor Catton

Teaching is a great complement to writing. It's very social and gets you out of your own head. It's also very optimistic. It renews itself every year - it's a renewable resource.

Eleanor Catton

I am a New Zealander, but I don't want to swallow New Zealand identity in one gulp.

Eleanor Catton