Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.
Robertson DaviesRead
To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote compares writing to a spider's web-making, emphasizing that an author's work is deeply personal and intrinsic.
Robertson Davies' quote suggests that the essence of an author's writing is derived from their inner self, much like a spider produces silk from its own body to build a web. Asking whether a piece of writing is autobiographical overlooks the profound connection between the author's life experiences and the creative process, indicating that all literature is inherently reflective of the writer's inner workings.
Themes
WritingCreativitySelfArtAuthorship
In practice
Example use cases
During a writers' workshop, to encourage participants to tap into their personal experiences.
More from Robertson Davies
All quotes →Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can't help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind.
Robertson DaviesRead
This is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries.
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Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.
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The egotist is all surface; underneath is a pulpy mess and a lot of self-doubt. But the egoist may be yielding and even deferential in things he doesn't consider important; in anything that touches his core he is remorseless.
Robertson DaviesRead
The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.
Robertson DaviesRead
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