She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down on four.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the power of creativity and transformation in healing and nurturing.
In this quote, Gloria Naylor paints a vivid picture of a character who possesses a magical ability to harness the elements of nature, namely lightning and celestial bodies, for the purpose of healing and nurturing all living beings. It reflects on the theme of empowerment through creativity, suggesting that just as one can wield nature's forces, individuals have the potential to create positive change and provide care in their own communities.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of creativity in education.
There is a problem in America. An Irish or Polish American can write a story and it's an American story. When a Black American writes a story, it's called a Black story. I take exception to that. Every artist has articulated to his own experience. The problem is that some people do not see Blacks as Americans.
Home. It's being new and old all rolled into one. Measuring your new against old friends, old ways, old places, Knowing that as long as the old survives, you can keep changing as much as you want without the nightmare of waking up to a total stranger.
Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power.
The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.
The larger-than-life thing is definitely what I'm after. I've always drawn dark stories. Occasionally, I'll try a perfect hero, but it's a real stretch for me. I like 'em warts and all, and obsessive and weird.
Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark... your words come out, and then nothing... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.
A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.
I always know when a novel is going to be a Barbara Vine one. In fact I believe that if I weren't to write it as Barbara Vine, I wouldn't be able to write it at all.
People try to pigeonhole comics by saying they're just for kids. So is The Odyssey. So is the Labors of Hercules, the story of Fa Mulan. The advantage of those stories over the contemporary ones is that they've had 2,000 years of editing. All the crap has been weeded out over time.
We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.
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