It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.
StingRead
If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.
Interpretation
The pressure of the writing profession can be overwhelming, especially when facing writer's block.
This quote by Sting highlights the intense fear and anxiety that can accompany a career in writing, particularly during periods when one struggles to produce new work. It reflects the idea that for writers, their ability to create is deeply tied to their identity and livelihood, making the inability to write a daunting experience that threatens their profession.
In practice
During a writing workshop, one might use this quote to emphasize the emotional struggles writers face.
It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.
Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness. Given the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose success.
It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do.
I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.
There's no religion but sex and music.
I don't need to manufacture trauma in my life to be creative. I have a big enough reservoir of sadness or emotional trauma to last me.
Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate.
A writer wants something more than money for his work: he wants permanence.
Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.
Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.
The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.
Writers don't often say anything that readers don't already know, unless its a news story. A writer's greatest pleasure is revealing to people things they knew but did not know they knew. Or did not realize everyone else knew, too. This produces a warm sense of fellow feeling and is the best a writer can do.
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