Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.
Leon TrotskyRead
The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls 'inspiration.'
Interpretation
Inspiration arises from the combination of conscious thought and unconscious ideas.
This quote by Leon Trotsky highlights the essence of inspiration as a creative process that merges our conscious knowledge and intentions with the deeper, often unrecognized, insights from the unconscious mind. It suggests that true creativity is not solely a product of deliberate planning but also a spontaneous union of different layers of thought and experience.
In practice
This quote can be used in a workshop on creative writing to emphasize the importance of tapping into one's unconscious mind.
Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.
Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, oneβs own and that of other people.
In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.
The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.
History has different yardsticks for the cruelty of the Northerners and the cruelty of the Southerners in the Civil War. A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains β let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!
When I was 18 and not sure whether I wanted to be an actor, I realised that a playwright has no voice without an actor. That's my reason for acting: to get that character as right as possible for my writer. And I have never changed my philosophy.
THE SUFFERING OF GENIUS AND ITS VALUE. The artistic genius desires to give pleasure, but if his mind is on a very high plane he does not easily find anyone to share his pleasure; he offers entertainment but nobody accepts it. That gives him, in certain circumstances, a comically touching pathos; for he has no right to force pleasure on men. He pipes, but none will dance: can that be tragic?
It's dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters.
The crown of literature is poetry.
I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.
To me, there is nothing higher than fiction. Nothing. It is fundamentally who I am. I am a teller of stories. For me, that's the only way I can make sense of the world, with all the dance that it involves.
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