My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the joy and value of creativity and simplicity in art.
In this quote, Cormac McCarthy expresses a profound appreciation for the act of creation, suggesting that a perfect day involves the tranquility and potential of simply having blank paper at one's disposal. He equates this serene creative space to 'heaven' and 'gold', indicating that true fulfillment comes from the ability to express oneself artistically rather than from external distractions or material pursuits.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of creativity in education.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
The institutions of human society treat us as parts of a machine. They assign us ranks and place considerable pressure upon us to fulfill defined roles. We need something to help us restore our lost and distorted humanity. Each of us has feelings that have been suppressed and have built up inside. There is a voiceless cry resting in the depths of our souls, waiting for expression. Art gives the soul's feelings voice and form.
I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, βItβs true. There arenβt any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.β I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.
When I moved to New York City in 1965, I wanted to be in theater. I was following my Ethel Barrymore dream. But I was too young to be Ethel.
Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.
Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art.
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