When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the author's aspirations and the complex journey of self-discovery in creativity.
Zadie Smith's quote humorously contrasts her early ambitions of writing like the renowned author Franz Kafka with her actual writing style, which she compares to a script editor for 'The Simpsons' influenced by various intellectual currents like Foucault and a religious cult. This highlights the often unpredictable and winding path of artistic development, where expectations may not align with reality, leading to a humorous acceptance of one's unique voice and experiences.
In practice
This quote can be used to inspire young writers during a workshop on finding their unique voice.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
I like to look at pictures, all kinds. And all those things you absorb come out subconsciously one way or another. You'll be taking photographs and suddenly know that you have resources from having looked at a lot of them before. There is no way you can avoid this. But this kind of subconscious influence is good, and it certainly can work for one. In fact, the more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.
To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.
They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die. I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye.
When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.
Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
Abstract painting seeks to be a pure pictorial language, and thus attempts to escape the essential impurity of all languages: the recourse to signs or forms that have meanings shared by everyone.
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