It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
Alain De BottonRead
Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
Interpretation
Writing serves as a therapeutic outlet that can also amplify one's internal struggles.
This quote by Alain De Botton highlights the complex relationship between writing and personal well-being. It suggests that while writing can be a form of self-therapy intended to alleviate mental distress, it can also intensify the very difficulties it seeks to address, leading to a deeper exploration of one's psyche and potentially resulting in madness. Essentially, it illustrates the dual nature of the writing process as both a healing and a revealing practice.
In practice
In a creative writing workshop, to emphasize the therapeutic nature of writing.
It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread
The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.
It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.
I used to think that animation was about moving stuff. In order to make it really great, you bounce it, squash it, stretch it, make the eyes go big. But, as time went on, I started loving animating a character who had a kind of burning passion in her heart. Suddenly, animation became for me not so much about moving stuff as it was about moving the audience.
If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were.
I'm a witch woman--high on tobacco and holy water. I'm a woman delighted with her disasters. They give me something to do. A profession of sorts...I have the magic of words. The power to charm and kill at will.
The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy.
I learned not to care ... and to write for an imaginary reader whose tastes were similar to my own.
The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
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