What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.
Willa CatherRead
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing can either be a commercially driven activity or an artistic pursuit focused on creativity and intrinsic value.
Willa Cather's quote emphasizes the dual nature of writing: it can be a pragmatic endeavor aimed at fulfilling market demands, akin to producing common goods like soap or breakfast foods, or it can be a profound artistic expression driven by the quest for innovation and originality, independent of commercial considerations. This highlights the tension between commercial viability and artistic integrity in the literary world.
Themes
WritingArtCreativityMarketStories
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop discussing the balance between commercial writing and creative projects.
More from Willa Cather
All quotes βThat is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
Willa CatherRead
Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.
Willa CatherRead
The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring; the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of the blue sky in it.
Willa CatherRead
This is reality, whether you like it or not--all those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.
Willa CatherRead
Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.
Willa CatherRead
Similar quotes
There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.
Alexander PayneRead
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeRead
The dissolution of the pictorial into sheer texture, into apparently sheer sensation, into an accumulation of repetitions, seems to speak for and answer something profound in contemporary sensibility.
Clement GreenbergRead
If we doubt the power of literature and art to civilise, how come no one has ever been mugged by a person carrying a well-thumbed copy of 'Middlemarch' in his back pocket?
Howard JacobsonRead
I like books that are fat and full.
Mary OliverRead
MORE CONSISTENTLY THAN EVER I WAS TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT CINEMA AS AN INSTRUMENT OF ART HAS ITS OWN POSSIBILITIES WHICH ARE EQUAL TO THOSE OF PROSE. I WANTED TO DEMONSTRATE HOW CINEMA IS ABLE TO OBSERVE LIFE, WITHOUT INTERFERING, CRUDELY OR OBVIOUSLY, WITH ITS CONTINUITY. FOR THAT IS WHERE I SEE THE POETIC ESSENCE OF CINEMA.
Andrei TarkovskyRead