When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the immersive and organic process of writing, where the author focuses on character-driven storytelling rather than theoretical constructs.
Salman Rushdie expresses the idea that during the writing process, he is deeply engaged with the characters he has created, allowing their internal motivations and stories to guide his narrative. This suggests that effective writing emerges from a genuine understanding of characters rather than relying on external theories or frameworks.
In practice
This quote could be used in a writing workshop to inspire participants to connect with their characters.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.
You don't have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day.
I find that when I write, I need things to be quiet, but when I design, I can't bear it if it's quiet.
A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.
Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I only wantedto build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home
It wasn't long after I began writing Star Wars that I realized the story was more than a single film could hold. As the saga of the Skywalkers and Jedi Knights unfolded, I began to see it as a tale that could take at least nine films to tell - three trilogies - and I realized, in making my way through the back story and after story, that I was really setting out to make the middle story.
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