Top 33 Michelle Paver Quotes

I think true wilderness can still be found, but it’s hard to reach and dangerous when you get there, which is probably why it still exists.

At university – when I was supposed to be studying biochemistry – I had tried to write a children’s book about a boy and a wolf cub, and there was a paragraph in that which was from the wolf’s point of view.

My novel ‘Wolf Brother’ is set in northern Scandinavia during the late Stone Age, so I was aware from the start of Norse influences. I used some Norse names, and the soul-eater Thiazzi is based on the Norse storm giant, Thiassi.

By about chapter six of ‘Wolf Brother,’ I was having so much fun that I knew I wanted it to go on and I couldn’t tell Torak’s story in one book. So I sat down, and it took me about a week to plan in broad outline all six books.

It’s the little details I love. How to fletch your arrows with owl feathers, because owls fly silently, so maybe your arrows will, too. How to carry fire in a piece of smouldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which help a world come alive.

Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it’s very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen.

I’m constantly being surprised and finding unplanned things – because the writing is a process of experiencing things on the ground with the characters.

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.

My mother had to stop me reading to make me go and get some fresh air. I used to get so annoyed. She actually had to sit on my book because, otherwise, I would find it.

I’m quite happy trekking around Greenland on my own, but those big book tours in America or the Far East are the only time I ever really feel lonely.

I’ve climbed Stromboli when it’s erupting, which is quite a heavy climb: three hours with a helmet to get to the top. When you’re there, and it’s dark, and you can see this eruption and feel it, it’s quite different to watching it on TV.

A lot of my writing is wish-fulfilment, making things the way I want them to be.

When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he said no. I was a burnt-out litigation solicitor in my thirties, hating my life, and his cancer made me re-evaluate it all.

I would love to live in the wilds of nowhere, and when writing ‘Chronicles,’ I would occasionally rent a cottage in the middle of nowhere that had no mobile reception, but I’m not about to move away from my family.

I didn’t wake up one day and think, ‘I’m not going to have children.’ My mother was a housewife and brought up three children, so I just thought it would happen.

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.

To experience the northern forest in the raw, I went to northern Finland and Lapland, travelling on horseback, and sleeping on reindeer skins in the traditional open-fronted Finnish laavu. I ate elk heart, reindeer and lingonberries, and tried out spruce resin: the chewing gum of the Stone Age.

I rode 300 miles through the forest and ate all sorts of strange food. And every time ‘Torak’ did something new, like swimming with killer whales or kayaking, I thought I’d better go and do it.

I saw myself as a trailblazer in the 1980s as a female lawyer in the City. It was exciting, as women were outnumbered by men five to one. But while I had this sense of trailblazing, in reality, I wasn’t pushing boundaries; it was just a personal myth I’d created, as I was doing a job I wasn’t enjoying.

Changing from biochemistry to law was easy because I was rubbish in the laboratory. I could never decide how much to put in a test tube because I’m not very good at maths.

I’m not the next J. K. Rowling. We’ve got one already. It’s flattering to be compared to her. I like her books and loved the first three particularly, but apart from the fact that they’ve got young boys as heroes, they’re very different.

Mostly, research is much more fun than the actual writing.

I could be less impatient with people. I sometimes judge by impressions.

If you get a sense that your writing isn’t quite working, change it. Or cut it out. Don’t just tell yourself it’ll do, because it won’t.

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.

People often ask writers where they get their inspiration, and for me, the short answer is that I haven’t a clue; I’m just grateful that I get them.

I actually carry a little picture of a wolf in my wallet, rather like people carry a picture of their kids. The reason I do that is to remind myself why I’m doing this, to remind myself of the story.

For a child, reading a book can be such an intense experience.

I talk to children in schools all over the world, and I’ve found that both boys and girls are fascinated by how hunter-gatherers manage to survive entirely on what’s around them in their environment: trees, rocks, animals and plants.

Indigenous people all over the world take quite a lot of trouble with their hair and their clothes.

In a ghost story, usually you’ve got to hang on until daylight, and you’ll be alright. But if daylight’s four months away, then you have a problem.

All stories come from the subconscious – which is why it doesn’t make sense to over-plan.

I don’t use the Internet, as I don’t like living with lots of distractions. I have tried, but I found it a hindrance. as my sense of priorities goes out of the window and it pulls me out of my writing, particularly with email. I’d sit there for hours just replying to emails.