Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.
Interpretation
Publishing can detract from the quality of writing due to external pressures, unlike the clarity gained from intimate experiences.
In this quote, Ernest Hemingway expresses the idea that the act of publishing books can negatively impact the writing process, suggesting that it brings about distractions and commercialization that can diminish artistic integrity. He contrasts this with the clarity and enlightenment that can come from intimate experiences, indicating that while both activities can be seen as overwhelming, the latter provides a profound illumination about life that publishing does not.
In practice
During a literary workshop, one might use this quote to emphasize the challenges writers face in maintaining artistic integrity.
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.
The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.
Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.
When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.
Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day.
I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.