Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music.
Interpretation
Ecstasy evokes emotions that are too profound for language and are best expressed through music.
In this quote, Mark Twain suggests that the experience of ecstasy transcends verbal expression; it is a profound feeling that cannot be adequately captured in words. Instead, such intense emotions resonate similarly to music, which has the power to convey what mere words often fail to express—allowing for a deeper connection to our feelings and experiences.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the power of art in healing.
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write.
Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'
After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always.
Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.
I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That’s the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.
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