We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing is a challenging yet rewarding endeavor that persists regardless of external recognition.
This quote by Jeffrey Eugenides highlights the dual nature of writing: the struggle involved in the daily act and the profound pleasure that occasionally arises from it. Despite the demanding and often frustrating process, it is this deep enjoyment that motivates writers, who may not have immediate recognition for their work but nonetheless experience significant personal satisfaction in their craft.
Themes
WritingProcessPleasureStruggleCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the creative process, I might refer to this quote to illustrate the dedication required in writing.
More from Jeffrey Eugenides
All quotes →It was the combination of many factors... With most people, suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty.
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Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.
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She lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread - the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue - before she`d remember the brutal fact that had caused it.
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It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.
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Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.
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