Release the Bats Quotes

“A movie grants a visa. A book makes you a citizen.”
― DBC Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It

“a man approached me once with a manuscript. He felt it could be the Next Big Thing if it had the right agent. It featured a toddler he’d left after a failed relationship. The book’s opening had him arriving home in happier times, which meant verbatim dialogue between ‘Mommeeeee’ and ‘Daddeeeeee’ and ‘Widdle babieeeeeee’. It was as heartbreaking to read as the man’s relationship must have been to live, but in a bad way. And the man wasn’t crazy. He loved books, was well read – but his writing in this case played thunderous notes on an inner piano that the rest of us just don’t have. It’s not to say the story couldn’t be beautifully told, that it couldn’t give us those feelings – but it would have to build that piano first. It means the energy from our feelings can’t always be spat directly onto a page, except to write a letter we never send. That energy instead has to propel us through the journey of writing as well as we can. It means we have to be able to stand back and see our theme in all its dimensions. It means the book about the psycho lover also shows his good qualities and isn’t a straight assassination. Before starting to write we need to assure ourselves that we’re not out to settle a score (or if we are, to make sure we do it symbolically or indirectly and with craft), and that we’re not stuck in a feeling-land where little Archie’s first birthday party would feel just as amazing to everyone else as it did to us. Nobody is interested in little Archie unless something big happens at the party.”
― D.B.C. Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It

“Technology can't do what humans do. Whatever it is that we do, we should do it now in earnest. If art is the gap's boatman, its job now grows critical: because it alone addresses our humanity.

And we're going to need some of that.”
― DBC Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It

“Now, 2.6 million years after we started making tools, the last 0.016 per cent of our history as produced the most change, an exponential curve turning vertical. It's why I keep saying 'a recent idea' to anything less than a couple of centuries old. That change is young, its paint is still wet. And it's still external, due to mechanisation and its effects, it hasn't really changed humans except to make the affluent fat—and by affluent I mean anyone who shits in good drinking water.”
― DBC Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It

“The beautiful thing about a book: once it runs it will never stop.”
― DBC Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It

“Pace excites, and dialogue is pace. Falling into good dialogue on page one can put us in your pocket.”
― DBC Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It

“... action, including dialogue, is fast, and accelerates; reflective writing is a brake and slows—and they will set off a pumping action that makes the story breathe. The speed of that breathing is set by the measure of action to reflection. More action, less reflection—faster. More reflection, less action—slower.”
― DBC Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It

“Over four weeks of autumn between my first novel being shortlisted and finally winning the Man Booker Prize, a curious thing happened in a downstairs bathroom of my house. Butterflies would appear and fly around my head when I went in for a crap. They would come out one by one. Strange, because their season was gone, there were none outside in nature, only in that toilet. But they wouldn't appear if I went in to take a leak. Now: the door was shut, they didn't come from outside. I couldn't see where they came from, and when left the room they would stay there, flying. but the next time I came in they would be gone; unless I came in for a crap, in which case they appeared again and flew around my head. It was a mystery. If I stayed there long enough, five would come out. It became predictable enough that I took a new pleasure in going to sit and think with the butterflies. If you believed in omens they seemed good ones.

After the prize I returned home to find they had gone. One day, much later, I solved the mystery: an old toothbrush mug had been exiled to the top of the bathroom cabinet. They had lived in the mug, maybe attracted by toothpaste. When the light had been on long enough—not so quick as when I took a leak—they must have thought it was their day in the sun and come out to fly around.

Poor bastards.”
― DBC Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It

“Something to note if you're a people watcher: the most revealing insights are on the fringes, not at the core. A zealot leader might be a study in zeal, but a broader spectrum of colours will flash from his followers.”
― DBC Pierre, Release the Bats: Writing Your Way Out Of It