The books I like to read the most feel like they've been written by somebody who had to write them or go crazy. They had to get them out of their heads. I like that kind of urgency.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of creativity driven by necessity and urgency.
Patrick Ness expresses his appreciation for books that seem to stem from an intense need to be written, suggesting that the best literature arises when authors feel a genuine urgency. This urgency often leads to passionate and authentic storytelling, resonating deeply with readers who can feel the writer's emotional investment in their work.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to inspire participants to express their truths.
HERE It’s- Can I say? It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside me. And i fall back into it.
Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?
If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.
No one ever seems to wonder what happens if it turns out we hate living on a planet? What if the sky’s too big? What if the air stinks? What if we go hungry?’ ‘And what if the air tastes of honey? What if there’s so much food we all get too fat? What if the sky is so beautiful we don’t get any work done because we’re all looking at it too much?
In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.
Dance is not endangered - it will always find a way to express itself.
Today, architecture is invention. It isn't enough to just be rational - It must also be beautiful.
I was thinking about what would it be, what would the characters be like, and it just suddenly dawned on me that, hey, nobody is doing an underseas show. So I started drawing these weird invertebrate animals, various characters like crawfish and starfish and squids and sponge.
Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don't know what that is; I don't think too much about that.
The actual making of a record is the most exciting part of this business.
I wanted to play roles which offered new ways of viewing black women and black people in general- and I have done that. And I have always, whether I needed to pay the rent or not, I've always turned down roles which I thought were stereotypical. And so when I look at my body of work in that respect, I am really happy. Because I feel my work does say something positive and that was what I always set out to do.
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