Barry Unsworth Quotes

"Angels are not complete, they need their counterparts, the dark needs the bright, the hidden needs the open, and vice versa. Sometimes they meet and recognise each other. Sometimes, as with Horatio and me, the pairing occurs over spaces of time and distance."

"In my generation, history was taught in terms of grand figures, men on whom the destiny of the nation hinged, quintessential heroes."

"Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false."

"But whatever the ramifications, whatever turns the path takes, the beginning is always there, in a particular moment, a particular point of access."

"Eudora Welty's 'A Curtain of Green' had an enormous effect on me. But my early attempts to graft stories from the Deep South onto North of England provincialism were not successful. All were rejected."

"All my fiction starts from a feeling of unique perception, the pressure of a secret, a story that needs to be told."

"We are quite at ease in this no man's land of ignorance and doubt and dispute, absorbed in the ambiguities of trying to reach truth by mixing fact with invention."

"I'm not a biographer, I'm a novelist."

"I like the condition of being an outsider, just passing through."

"I'm unemployable in any other capacity."