The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish a flow of words, and criticise them later.' You give this advice but can't always take it.
Hilary MantelRead
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People are often more afraid of the unknown than the known, leading them to fill gaps with their fears and desires.
Hilary Mantel's quote highlights the human tendency to react to uncertainty with fear and imagination. When confronted with a lack of concrete information, individuals often project their anxieties and hopes into the void, creating narratives that reflect their inner turmoil rather than the objective reality. This suggests that knowledge and clarity can help mitigate fears, as people are often more troubled by ambiguity than by facts.
Themes
FearUncertaintyKnowledgeImaginationTruth
In practice
Example use cases
This quote is perfect for a discussion on public speaking, emphasizing the importance of clarity over ambiguity.
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Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.
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He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
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History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
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You can control and censor a child's reading, but you can't control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child's heart.
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