Quotes from 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.

The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.

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

A man ought never to trust another mans evaluation of a third mans disposition.

I'm a Libra. I'm happy to be an air sign, but I do think I have a little too much air in my chart as a whole - some more water would be useful, especially in my personal life, as an emotional counterweight to all that abstraction.

The way that I see astrology is as a repository of thought and psychology. A system we've created as a culture as way to make things mean things.

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

I've had countless reviews sort that have made me cry. It's funny, it doesn't ever get better either; you can't turn your ears off.

My sense of injustice about our family's 'weirdness' in not owning a car was amplified by the fact that we did not own a television, either - my parents were unapologetic about this and told me very cheerfully that I would thank them for it when I was older, which was quite true.

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

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.

I would draw a really sharp distinction between creating and producing. I think that they're very different things.

From the very beginning, I had an ambition for 'The Luminaries': a direction - but not a real idea.

What I feel is that true creation happens when you're making something out of nothing - like it's divine, you know. Creation is a completely divine concept.

My parents took me to the Bronte parsonage in England when I was a teenager. I had a fight with my mum, burst into tears, jumped over a stile and ran out into the moors. It felt very authentic: A moor really is an excellent place to have a temper tantrum.

I loved 'Middlemarch,' I think that's one of my favourite books of all time, actually.

Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you.

It seems pretentious to assume that we are not creatures of action. I think often it takes a situation of extreme absurdity, extreme action, to push us to the limits of what our character is, and to change us as people.

There are so many ways of posturing that people associate with being a writer. They imagine you wearing a beret and drinking only red wine and being full of yourself, and so, for a long time, the way I felt about writing was too private. I felt it too important and didn't want to be teased about it. So I lied about it.

I vote far-left. I am frequently angered by corporate greed and think education ought to be free and teachers paid well.

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.

Margaret Atwood was the author who took me out of children's literature and guided me towards adult literature.

We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience. And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive.

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.