This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.
Interpretation
Writers aspire to create powerful and illuminating language that resonates deeply without losing its essence.
In this quote, Lawrence Clark Powell expresses the desire of writers to craft words that shine brightly with meaning and emotion, akin to a flame that provides light without the risk of burning away. This reflects the delicate balance that writers strive for in their art: to evoke passion and insight while maintaining the integrity of their message and expression.
In practice
A writing workshop where participants discuss the nuances of impactful language.
A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library...witho ut cost to the reader.
Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.
Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.
I can speak of my own criterion for judging whether or not a book is good or bad. I ask of it a single question, From how deep and true an impulse did it spring? Was it written merely to shock? Only to make money? Or was it written to create something more perfect and more lasting than the life experience from which it came?
No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library... When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end.
What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.
Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.
I can communicate far better on a guitar than I can through my mouth.
l photograph what l do not wish to paint and l paint that which l cannot photograph.
This is the beauty of fiction. We may not like these characters, but we inhabit them.
Rewriting isn't just about dialogue; it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene.
The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.
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