It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
Interpretation
Writers have a crucial role in society that corresponds to their writing skills.
Ezra Pound emphasizes that literature and writing are deeply connected to the social context in which they are created. He suggests that authors have an important responsibility to society that is directly linked to their talent and abilities, indicating that their work has practical implications beyond mere artistic expression.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of artists in society, this quote can highlight the importance of literature.
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.
Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in.
There is something I keep wanting to say about reading short stories. I am doing it now, because I many never have another occasion. Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.
Writers of feminist dystopian fiction are alert to the realities that grind down women's lives, that make the unthinkable suddenly thinkable.
A boy's story is the best that is ever told.
I write adult fiction, but a good 40 to 50 per cent of my readers are teenagers. I love that if they have to grow up and move past JK Rowling they can move to me. From Jo to Jodi!
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