I write in the morning at a table, longhand on yellow legal pads, just like Nixon, when I’m doing fiction.
Interpretation
Gore Vidal emphasizes the importance of a specific writing routine and medium that resonates with his creative process.
In this quote, Gore Vidal reflects on his approach to writing fiction, highlighting the simplicity and authenticity of writing longhand on yellow legal pads in the morning. By comparing his method to that of Richard Nixon, he invokes a sense of nostalgia and seriousness, suggesting that the act of writing is both a disciplined craft and a personal ritual that allows for creative expression.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to inspire students about the creative process.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.
I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
Not for a moment, beautiful aged Walt Whitman, have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies.
Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.
The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.
In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
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