Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
Alice WalkerRead
I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of authentic expression in writing, without being overly concerned about who will read it.
Alice Walker expresses the idea that true creativity stems from writing for oneself rather than for a particular audience. This approach allows for genuine self-expression and fosters a connection to the art of writing itself, liberated from the pressures of external validation or expectations.
In practice
In a writing workshop, you might use this quote to encourage participants to focus on their own voice rather than worrying about others' opinions.
Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.
On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.
I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.
How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?
One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.
You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.
Music is structure out of Chaos
My secret ambition was always to provide music for animation films: something with an Indian theme, either a fairy tale or mythological tale or on the Krishna theme. I still have a very deep desire, but these sorts of chances don't always come.
No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.
No story lives unless someone wants to listen. So thank you, all of you.
Wanting to play the guitar was neither a wild dream nor a realistic ambition. It was simply inevitable.
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