The idea of some people being less than people is poison to any society and needs to be named as such in order to halt its spread before it turns the soul of a society septic.
Richard FlanaganRead
I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the spontaneity and unpredictability of creative writing.
Richard Flanagan suggests that true creativity comes from a place of uncertainty and exploration. When a writer is overly conscious of their direction or meaning, the work loses its authenticity and depth, becoming mere mechanical expression rather than a genuine exploration of ideas and feelings. It's about trusting the process and allowing creativity to flow without constraints.
Themes
CreativityWritingAuthenticityExplorationProcess
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop where participants might feel pressure to conform, this quote can encourage them to embrace their uniqueness.
More from Richard Flanagan
All quotes βMy father was a Japanese prisoner of war, a survivor of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, built by a quarter of a million slave labourers in 1943. Between 100,000 and 200,000 died.
Richard FlanaganRead
If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question.
Richard FlanaganRead
Is it easier for a man to live his life again as a fish, than to accept the wonder of being human? So alone, so frightened, so wanting for what we are afraid to give tongue to.
Richard FlanaganRead
I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.
Richard FlanaganRead
After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always.
Richard FlanaganRead
Similar quotes
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
Franz KafkaRead
The seeming significance of nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man . . . If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
The actor must use his imagination to be able to answer all questions (when, where, why, how). Make the make-believer existence more definite.
Constantin StanislavskiRead
What I want to see is more mixed casts. We need it. People need to be brave - in the real world, everyone and anyone is around. So if people get to see themselves on the stage, they'll want to come.
Cynthia ErivoRead
When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us
Robert SmithsonRead
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.
Samuel JohnsonRead