The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
Teju ColeRead
The original sense of the word 'influence' is 'to flow into.' For the most part, these writers that I admire... their style flows into me without my intervention, which is what explains the broad range of writers who I've been compared with; it reflects my reading.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Influence in writing is a natural and passive process where styles blend through reading.
In this quote, Teju Cole reflects on the organic nature of influence in writing, suggesting that an author's style is not merely a product of conscious effort but rather a fluid process of absorbing and integrating the styles of various writers. He emphasizes how his own writing is shaped by the diverse influences of the authors he admires, highlighting the interconnectedness of reading and writing.
Themes
InfluenceWritingStyleReadingIntervention
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the creative process in a writing workshop.
More from Teju Cole
All quotes →I'm not trying to be a poet on Twitter; I'm trying to be aware of the fact that a very simple sentence, well written, can have a very moving effect without that person knowing why. There's a deep genetic part of you that somehow, even without your permission, recognizes good language when it arrives.
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To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.
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We don't experience our lives as plots. If I asked you to tell me what your last week was like, you're not really gonna give me plot. You're gonna give me sort of linked narrative. And I wanted to see how do we bring that into fiction without losing the reader.
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Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.
Teju ColeRead
In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.
Teju ColeRead
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