Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.
Celeste NgRead
A good poem is an amazing thing: a perfectly distilled, articulate moment. It opens you up - sometimes slowly, like the blooming of a flower, and sometimes with a quick knife-slice.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A good poem encapsulates profound emotions and moments, impacting the reader deeply and uniquely.
In this quote, Celeste Ng highlights the extraordinary nature of a good poem, describing it as a distilled moment that can evoke strong feelings. It can gently unfold its meaning or deliver a sudden impact, similar to a flower's blossoming or a sharp cut, emphasizing poetry's ability to resonate with the human experience in varied and impactful ways.
Themes
PoetryArtEmotionExperienceImpact
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a poetry reading to highlight the significance of the art form.
More from Celeste Ng
All quotes →Spend enough time wrangling a toddler, and you get good at being kind but firm. Like your child, you must be doggedly single-minded when it matters.
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For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.
Celeste NgRead
It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that there are people out there reading your work, people who may be deeply affected by what you do, that you are writing not just for yourself, but for them.
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What I remember about race relations in the 1990s is that you showed your awareness by saying you didn't see race, that you were colour-blind.
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In fiction you're not often writing about the typical; you are interested in outliers, the points of interest. Part of it comes from feeling I was the only Asian or person of colour... another part comes from my personality: I'm an introvert, and my usual survival mode in a large group is to stand by a wall and watch everybody.
Celeste NgRead
Similar quotes
If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.
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There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
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Who knows if the moon's / a balloon, coming out of a keen city / in the sky - filled with pretty people?
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I always did what I thought was interesting. I always just did what caught my fantasy. Looking like a woman, that was never the criteria for me. It was always to do drag. And drag is not gender-specific. Drag is just drag. It's exaggeration.
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For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
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The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices.
Martin LutherRead