” All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English, now I write as if I were American. You take other people’s backgrounds and characters, Keats called it negative capability. “
” I like characters who are larger-than-life, whether life-loving women or the artist or guru who grabs everything. But I don’t live among people like that. “
” Film, for me, is in two stages. One is when I write the script more or less on my own – that’s the nice bit. And then comes for me the unpleasant bit when they all go off, 100 people – actors and camera people and film and sound – and I stay away. When they go into the editing room, I come in again, and that’s the bit I like. “
” Film is not like a book, it’s not a writer’s baby at all. So many people have put in their talent, by that time that you feel grateful for what they’ve done, you don’t feel possessive about it in any way. “
” First, I was so dazzled and besotted by India. People said the poverty was biblical, and I’m afraid that was my attitude, too. It’s terribly easy to get used to someone else’s poverty if you’re living a middle-class life in it. But after a while, I saw it wasn’t possible to accept it, and I also didn’t want to. “
” Everyone is so estranged, no one is rooted. That’s what I like to write about more than anything else. Everything being so mixed up. Racially mixed up, people moving from place to place, everything shifting. “
All 6 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Quotes about People in picture
Topics: People quotes