95 Quotes by Michelle Paver

Why do so many children love the idea of being snowed in or shipwrecked, of having to survive on one's own? When I was a child, I was no exception. I wanted to hunt with a bow and arrow like the Stone Age people: to skin deer and build my own shelter. And I desperately wanted a wolf. As we lived in London, my options were limited.

To get the feel of the polar night, I went back to Spitsbergen in winter. I went snowshoeing in the dark and experimented with headlamps and climbed a glacier in driving snow.

I sometimes wonder why I do so much research - I look at other successful writers, and I think it must just be so relaxing to write about flying horses or something, but I have to make it plausible.

The most remote place I've been to was in Greenland. I remember setting out for a solo hike from a small cabin, itself several hours' boat ride from the nearest settlement.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

For a novelist, the great thing about the Stone Age people is that we know virtually nothing about their beliefs - which means that I get to make it up! But it's still got to be plausible.

Doing field trips rather than simply researching online allows me to experience the story from the point of view of my main character; you can't get that by sitting at a desk.

There's this whole thing of being two people. You are the person you want to be - the writer - and then there's this weird other life of going on tour and talking about the writing. And that really is weird.

I want to make the world real. I have to be able to believe that it could happen. I can't put Pegasus in my stories because horses can't fly. It's just a quirk in my brain.