Man is able to do what he is unable to imagine. His head trails a wake through the galaxy of the absurd.
Rene CharRead
How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing can come unexpectedly and is often a passionate struggle for the writer.
Rene Char uses the metaphor of a bird's down on a cold winter windowpane to illustrate how writing can arrive as a delicate yet profound inspiration. The struggle of firebrands signifies the intense emotions and challenges that persist in the creative process, emphasizing that the journey of writing is continuous and deeply rooted in one's heart.
Themes
WritingInspirationStruggleCreativityPassion
In practice
Example use cases
In a creative writing class to emphasize the unpredictable nature of inspiration.
More from Rene Char
All quotes →Each act is virgin, even the repeated ones.
Rene CharRead
What comes into the world to disturb nothing merits neither attention nor patience
Rene CharRead
A poem is the realization of love. . . .
Rene CharRead
How can we live without the unknown before us?
Rene CharRead
Similar quotes
I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.
Edward SaidRead
Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.
Andre BretonRead
If that voice that you created that is most alive in the poem isn't carried throughout the whole poem, then I destroy where it's not there, and I reconstruct it so that that voice is the dominant voice in the poem.
Philip LevineRead
I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.
Khaled HosseiniRead
To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it.
Trent ReznorRead
Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.
Roland BarthesRead