Literary Birthday – 13 April – John Braine

John Braine was born 13 April 1922, and died 28 October 1986.

Seven Quotes

1. To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don’t have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be.
2. If the original of any of your characters would win a libel case against you, you have failed to create a real character.
3. Writing’s not always a pleasure to me, but if I’m not writing every other pleasure loses its savour.
4. Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.
5. There isn’t, unfortunately, any way of discovering whether you can write a publishable novel except by writing it.
6. The worst that can happen to the writer who tries and fails – unless he has inflated or mystical notion of what it is to be a novelist – is that he will discover, for him, writing is not the best place to seek joy and satisfaction. More people fail at becoming successful businessmen than fail at becoming artists.
7. Solitude and quiet are highly desirable, but the lack of them is no barrier to writing… The will to work builds all the seclusion that one needs.

John Braine was an English novelist, associated with the Angry Young Men movement. His novels include Room at the Top, The Crying Game, and The Jealous God. He also wrote Becoming a Writer and How To Write A Novel.

by Amanda Patterson

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