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.
It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision.
Men can absent themselves from real life for their art more easily. Women are anchored into the quotidian business of getting food on the table, making sure everybody's socks match, the soccer gear is ready. I admire idealists, but they're usually enabled by someone who holds the tether on their balloon, who pays the bills and sweeps up after them.
That's what's nice about directing a film and having it done: There's nothing more I can do about it. It's done. That's it. All I can do is let it go and hope that people are kind to it.
As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.
The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.
What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.
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