Literary Birthday – 4 September – Alex Michaelides

Happy Birthday, Alex Michaelides, born on 4 September 1977.

Alex Michaelides Quotes

1. I’m usually very, very controlled. I plan everything. I let [The Fury narrator] Elliot tell me the story. I’ve never had someone come alive to that degree. I was just tapping away, and it was all appearing. It was joyful, to allow yourself to submit to it, and not be afraid.
2. I can only write at the kitchen table because as a kid I would do my homework there.
3. When I write I drink coffee, smoke weed, and don’t eat. Then I cook myself a huge meal at the end. I think it’s good to be in a slightly heightened state when you write because it’s about freeing the right brain and just being creative.
4. I’ll get very creative and free in my writing and then when I edit, I print it out, sit down, go through it, and I’m very serious.
5. I always felt like I wanted to be a writer but when I was young, I didn’t have anything to say. I would write a plot but it was just really shallow. Then I had a lot of therapy and a lot of learning and now I feel like I’ve got something to communicate [with storytelling]. Otherwise, you’re just selling just cheap thriller plots.
6. I grew up in a house full of books; and I can honestly say that every single one of the writers who proved to be a major influence on me was already on the shelves amongst my mother’s books – Dickens, Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Isherwood, Margaret Atwood, Henry James – and it was simply a case of my mother taking down these books off the shelves and giving me them me to read.
7. I find writing a novel infinitely satisfying, in a way that I never did with a screenplay. I no longer mind the loneliness, in fact I embrace it. I have no desire to return to writing screenplays. The irony that it took abandoning Hollywood to have producers finally be interested in my writing is not lost on me.

Source for quotes 1-5: Bustle and 6-7: The Irish Times

Alex Michaelides is a bestselling British Cypriot author and screenwriter. He has an M.A. in English Literature from Trinity College, Cambridge, and an M.A. in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. His first novel, The Silent Patient, debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide. The book has been sold in 51 countries and was optioned for film by Plan B. His second novel, The Maidens, was also an instant New York Times bestseller. It has been optioned for television by Miramax Television and Stone Village. His third novel is The Fury. Follow him on Instagram @alex.michaelides and Facebook.

Source for photograph: Author’s Website

by Amanda Patterson
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