Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.
Go ahead, scoff, he said, petulant. Except in the life of a hero, the whole world’s meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what’s possible. That’s the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.
Real suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damned thing after another.
My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.
We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.
Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.
The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.
Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination than only writing about what you know.
People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it’s impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they’ll keep writing and you’ll have hanged yourself.
The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.
Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.
When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep As the North Sea. But I have lived, And now I do not sleep.
So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.
Find a pile of gold and sit on it.
Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.
The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.