I don't know if music can change the world overnight but I know that music can help someone make it through a difficult night.
Michael FrantiRead
There's a half-conscious state you enter when you're actually generating prose, and you are simply a better writer in that place. In fact it's the only place where you even are a writer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the unique state of flow that a writer experiences while creating, which enhances their writing ability.
John Jeremiah Sullivan highlights the importance of a specific mental state that writers enter when shaping their thoughts into prose. This 'half-conscious state' is crucial for creativity and authenticity, suggesting that true writing comes from a place beyond ordinary consciousness, where the writer can fully embody their role and tap into deeper ideas and emotions.
Themes
WritingCreativityProseMindsetAuthenticity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a writing workshop to inspire participants to embrace their creative state.
Similar quotes
My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes.
Steve PrefontaineRead
Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.
Jay-ZRead
Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about...)
C. S. LewisRead
You need music, I don't know why. It's probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.
Jerry GarciaRead
I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength. [From a 1986 Fangoria interview]
James CameronRead