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.
Fashion is a language. Some know it, some learn it, some never will - like an instinct.
When a dish works, it works for everyone, whether you're Asian, European, African, American or anybody else.
I look back on those early days in the theater like the beginning of a love affair, when you're totally in love with the work, and that's all there is.
I've been blessed with enough wealth that I can make a film myself up to a certain budget. So one way I thought I would reinvent myself was just to make these very small, personal films that I've financed myself.
Nothing convinces an artist more of the arbitrariness of the means to which he resorts to attain a goal - however permanent it may be - than the creative process itself, the process of composition.
If having a story that's compelling - you want to know what will happen - is traditional, then ultimately I am a traditionalist. That is what readers care about. It's what I care about as a reader. Now if I can have that along with a strong girding of ideas and some kind of exciting technical forays - then that is just the jackpot.
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