Peter Carey Quotes

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Peter Carey

Profession : Novelist

Birth : May 7, 1943

It's true: one of the things that I've always thought about American society is that you never get the sort of natural politicisation of class consciousness that you would get in the United Kingdom or even in Australia.

Peter Carey

Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry.

Peter Carey

I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.

Peter Carey

And it's always possible that you will not get a nice review. So - and that's enraging of course, to get a bad review, you can't talk back, and it's sort of shaming in a way.

Peter Carey

Australia is my lens. I cannot see the world any other way.

Peter Carey

I woke up in Australia almost every day for the first 47 years of my life. When I left, I didn't discard that, didn't reject that, didn't forget that. Not even New York City can wipe that out.

Peter Carey

The Australian cast of mind is not something I would want to be without - and I couldn't be without. It's not a choice.

Peter Carey

When I was young and easily outraged, I would be upset when every fictional character I created was somehow reduced to 'autobiography.'

Peter Carey

Culture is the way for a country to know itself.

Peter Carey

I think there was, and there is, a real Commonwealth culture. It's different. America doesn't really feel to be a part of that.

Peter Carey

The failure of the U.S.'s foreign adventures often seems to have its roots in the U.S.'s total ignorance of things on the ground, of the countries that they fiddle with.

Peter Carey

I would be the worst person on earth to be called to write an account of someone else's life.

Peter Carey

I'm someone who always wants to do everything differently. If I have a pattern, I'd rather I didn't have a pattern. I want every book to be unpredictable and new. Damn it!

Peter Carey

My father left school at the age of fourteen, so this was a man with no deep experience of formal education.

Peter Carey

My mother was the daughter of a poor schoolteacher - well, that's a tautology - a country schoolteacher.

Peter Carey

When I finally began to publish, my father never read my work. He'd say, 'Oh, that's your mother's sort of thing.' But my mother found the books rather upsetting. I figure she read just enough to know that she didn't want to go there.

Peter Carey

At school, I was fanatical about being a scientist.

Peter Carey

When I finished 'True History of the Kelly Gang,' I realised that Faulkner had not lost his power over me.

Peter Carey

I have no interest in writing, generally speaking, about America at all - even if it does continue to terrify me.

Peter Carey

When I went to live in New York, I didn't mean to stay there, but here I am.

Peter Carey