The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.
Interpretation
Using the past as inspiration allows for creative freedom and innovation in storytelling.
Peter Carey's quote emphasizes the importance of drawing from historical events and experiences to create art, specifically in novel writing. While he acknowledges the necessity of research, he suggests that true creativity lies in transforming well-known narratives into new and compelling stories, thus allowing writers the freedom to invent and explore beyond the conventional understanding of the past.
In practice
An author might quote this to inspire fellow writers at a literary workshop.
Our prime minister could embrace and forgive the people who killed our beloved sons and fathers, and so he should, but he could not, would not, apologise to the Aboriginal people for 200 years of murder and abuse. The battle against the Turks, he said in Gallipoli, was our history, our tradition. The war against the Aboriginals, he had already said at home, had happened long ago. The battle had made us; the war that won the continent was best forgotten
I did not know that history is like a blood stain that keeps on showing on the wall no matter how many new owners take possession, no matter how many times we pint over it.
Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.
Art would be useless if the world were perfect.
It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.
Art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life.
I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.
I find the greatest songs in the world come out of pain, and I don't like it! Here's what it does: It strips away all of your facade. It makes you so honest. It's cleansing.
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