I always try to keep that feeling of being on the edge. I'm afraid of knowing too well and seeming mechanical.
Interpretation
The quote conveys the importance of maintaining a sense of spontaneity and authenticity in one’s work.
Catherine Deneuve expresses her desire to remain connected to the raw and creative aspects of her art by avoiding the pitfalls of familiarity and predictability. She suggests that a mechanical or overly analytical approach to her craft could strip away the emotional resonance and vibrancy that make it meaningful.
In practice
In a discussion on creativity in art school, this quote can inspire students to embrace their unique processes.
A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.
I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.
The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.
Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .
I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.
They [photographs] teach you about your own unraveling past, or about the immediacy of yesterday. They show you what you look at. If you take a photograph, you've been responsive to something, and you looked hard at it. Hard for a thousandth of a second, hard for ten minutes. But hard, nonetheless. And it's the quality of that bite that teaches you how connected you were to that thing, and where you stood in relation to it, then and now.
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