I'll tell you," said Beatty, smiling at his cards. "That made you for a little while a drunkard. Read a few lines and off you go over the cliff. Bang, you're ready to blow up the world, chop off heads, knock down women and children, destroy authority. I know. I've been through it all.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates how literature can provoke intense emotions and violent thoughts.
In this quote, Beatty reflects on the power of written words to evoke strong feelings and responses in individuals, suggesting that reading can lead to radical thoughts and actions. He conveys a sense of personal experience, indicating that he has felt these overwhelming impulses himself, highlighting the destructive potential of literature when mishandled or misunderstood.
In practice
During a discussion on censorship in literature.
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview (Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)
I never went to college, so I went to the library.
There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.
I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour.
The first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
You'll live forever in our hearts, big man. That particularly galled me, because it implied the immortality of those left behind: You will live forever in my memory, because I will live forever! I AM YOUR GOD NOW, DEAD BOY! I OWN YOU!
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.
For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.
There was a time when the reader of an unexciting newspaper would remark, 'How dull is the world today!' Nowadays he says, 'What a dull newspaper!'
Pleasure without God, without the sacred boundaries, will actually leave you emptier than before. And this is biblical truth, this is experiential truth. The loneliest people in the world are amongst the wealthiest and most famous who found no boundaries within which to live. That is a fact I've seen again and again.
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