The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning
Anne TylerRead
I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the idea of reaching a point of exhaustion in self-expression and seeking freedom beyond it.
In this quote, Anne Tyler expresses a sentiment about the limitations of verbal communication, suggesting that there may come a time when one feels they have exhausted their ability to express thoughts and feelings. This signals a desire to move past mere words and engage with life in a more profound, authentic manner, highlighting a philosophical view on the relationship between language, identity, and existence.
In practice
A speaker reflecting on the limits of their speech during a lecture.
The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning
I don't know what takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world.
I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns
I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.
It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
And she thought what a clean, simple life she would have led if it weren't for love.
The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.
A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
Violence is a symptom of impotence.
Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores; and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
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