When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.
Interpretation
Writing is an inherent need for some individuals, regardless of circumstances.
This quote by Julio Cortazar highlights the innate drive of a writer to express themselves through writing. It suggests that whether motivated by desire or obligation, the act of writing is an essential part of the writer's existence, indicating a deep connection to the craft that transcends external factors.
In practice
In a speech at a literary festival to inspire aspiring writers.
La Maga did not know that my kisses were like eyes which began to open up beyond her, and that I went along outside as if I saw a different concept of the world, the dizzy pilot of a black prow which cut the water of time and negated it.
Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.
The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film. I donβt want to write anything but takes.
Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.
As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. (...) You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert.
You're like a witness. You're the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the paintings are there and you're in the museum too, near and far away at the same time. I'm a painting. Rocamadour is a painting. Etienne is a painting, this room is a painting. You think that you're in the room but you're not. You're looking at the room, you're not in the room.
When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement.
Ballet in the air... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate
I think the way the audience takes the Indian film-star is a little different from the way the audience takes the Western star there. We are considered like demi-gods here, and the reason is not because we are better or good, but because there is no other mode of entertainment in India.
But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.
To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
Do you know what I've learned? That although ecstasy is the ability to stand outside yourself, dance is a way of rising up into space, of discovering new dimensions while still remaining in touch with your body. When you dance, the spiritual world and the real world manage to coexist quite happily. I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies.
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