Novelists don't age as quickly as philosophers, who often face professional senility in their late twenties.
Interpretation
Novelists have a longer creative lifespan than philosophers, who often peak early in their careers.
This quote suggests that novelists can continue to evolve and grow creatively over time, while philosophers may reach a point of diminishing returns in their intellectual output at a younger age. It reflects on the different nature of creativity in literature compared to philosophy, where the intense contemplation and theoretical insights required might lead to intellectual stagnation sooner.
In practice
In a literary discussion about the evolving nature of storytelling, this quote can highlight the longevity of a novelist's creativity.
Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.
Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark - spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.
You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that?
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.
Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.
The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.
What pornographic literature does is precisely to drive a wedge between one's existence as a sexual being - while in ordinary life a healthy person is one who prevents such a gap from opening up
I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.
Money isn't automatically freedom. You need to look carefully at what you're doing to earn the money before you can conclude that you are, in practice, free. This is a cost-benefit analysis we should all perform on our own lives.
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