I am a book I neither wrote nor read.
Delmore SchwartzRead
Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of expressing unique experiences in writing to preserve them for the future.
Delmore Schwartz suggests that significant writing captures experiences and insights in such a way that they can resonate universally, allowing readers to perceive truths without needing to reiterate them. The essence of impactful writing is to articulate what the author has witnessed so vividly that it remains communicated beyond personal experience, creating a lasting imprint within the literary landscape.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to inspire students to convey their unique stories.
In every man there is a hidden child which is called the urge to create and he prefers as play things and serious things not the miniature ships, recreated in the minutest detail, but the walnutshell with a bird feather as mast and sail and a pebble as the captain. He also wants to be able to participate and to co-create in art, rather than being simply an admiring viewer. For this "child in man" is the immortal creator within him.
I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.
I'm not trying to be sexy. It's just my way of expressing myself when I move around.
I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.
I'm a rewriter. That's the part I like best . . . once I have a pile of paper to work with, it's like having the pieces of a puzzle. I just have to put the pieces together to make a picture.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
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