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.
I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you've lost human scale.
Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.
A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.
Winning a competition in architecture is a ticket to oblivion. It's just an idea. Ninety-nine per cent never get built.
For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.
I, too, am interested in identity and Islam, which is what people expect of us. But one must not write what is expected. It's important for North African writers to show they have other things to say.
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