Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.
James GearyRead
Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns.
Interpretation
Metaphor shapes how we understand and create ideas by identifying and constructing patterns.
James Geary's quote highlights the dual role of metaphor in human cognition. It suggests that while metaphors help us recognize existing patterns in our experiences, they also empower us to forge new connections and interpretations, ultimately shaping our understanding of the world around us.
In practice
In a poetry workshop, one could use this quote to illustrate the power of metaphor in crafting imagery.
Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.
I am very into lyrics. I start with what the words are saying, what the storyline is saying, like a good script. It should really capture me, do something for me. If I don't get it, it's not going to move people, and if it's not going to move people, it's not going to happen.
Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.
I just want to see more women in film and behind the camera. I'm tired of seeing movies from one perspective.
My only job is to write in such a way that the reader gets a new handle on humanity.
A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk.
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