My mother had no idea that her daughter would turn out to be a writer, but she would not let me go through a day of my childhood without music.
As authors evolve and try to trace the precedents that have shaped their work, it sometimes becomes a matter of identifying the shadowy figure in the back row of the mental photograph, or of grabbing at the tail of a memory that's just slipping out the window into thin air.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote speaks to the challenges authors face in recognizing influences on their work and how fleeting memories can affect their creative process.
Virginia Euwer Wolff highlights the complex journey of authors as they seek to understand and articulate the inspirations and influences that shape their narratives. This metaphorical 'shadowy figure' symbolizes the often elusive influences in an author's psyche, suggesting that while these inspirations may be present, they are difficult to grasp and interpret as they can slip away from conscious memory, much like a fleeting thought or recollection.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creative writing, this quote could be used to illustrate the importance of understanding one's influences.
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I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.
We are all affected by Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, and Mies van der Rohe. But no less than Bramante, Borromini, and Bernini. Architecture is a tradition, a long continuum. Whether we break with tradition or enhance it, we are still connected to that past. We evolve.
It is important that we have the inner richness to be able to look up at the stars or the moon and compose a poem once in a while. When we open wide our minds and fix our gaze on the universe, we fix our gaze on our own life.
While I admire writers who are able to write with a vitality based on order and action, I work in a different vein. I often feel that if I can get the language just right, the language hypnotizes the reader.
There are other singers of ranchera music who sing very beautifully, but you can tell from the way they sing that they never lived on a ranch. They never knew what it was to milk a cow, to birth a calf, to shoe a horse. I've lived all that.
The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.