16 Quotes by Charles Palliser

To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if I can write it; otherwise, I won't want to.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

I'm quite intrigued by the notion of a book that is completely self-contained but related to another book. I've coined a rather hideous word for it - a paraquel.

In Victorian fiction, there would be a chapter at the end devoted to righting all of the wrongs. I thought to right all of the wrongs would be too glib. I thought it would be better to lull the reader into thinking that is the way it would work, but then not to do that.

Such people are their own punishment.

I said: I don’t ever find people uninteresting. On the contrary, I find them so fascinating and so highly-flavoured that after small helpings, I have to go away and chew them slowly and analyse the taste of them.

I think every first-person narrator in a novel should be compromised. I prefer that word to 'unreliable.'