I made a wish on this tree years ago," Marco says. "What did you wish for?" Bailey asks. Marco leans forward and whispers in Bailey's ear. "I wished for her.
Erin MorgensternRead
It is perhaps both a blessing and a curse that fictional worlds spring into my mind nearly fully formed and it takes quite a while to sift through everything to find the story.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The creative process can be both wonderful and overwhelming, as ideas can come to mind effortlessly yet require time to develop.
Erin Morgenstern expresses the dual nature of creativity, highlighting how the vivid and complete worlds imagined by an artist can feel like both a gift and a burden. While such inspiration can lead to rich storytelling, the challenge lies in organizing and refining those ideas to create a coherent narrative. This reflects the complexities of artistic creation, where the initial spark of imagination must be carefully cultivated into a finished work.
Themes
CreativityImaginationStorytellingArtProcess
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared during a creative writing workshop to inspire participants.
More from Erin Morgenstern
All quotes →I worry hope will crush me, the way love has so many times before. Are they so different, hope and love? O & E in the same place, half of the other in each word. Both swimming in unknowns. I’ve been through the big changes. These ones should seem easier in comparison, I should be more prepared, but they don’t and I’m not. Sometimes I feel like a broken-wing butterfly, clinging to a window screen. Afraid to let go. Afraid to stay. Wondering how much wing is enough to fly.
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Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?
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Trapped in silence, Marco traces apologies and adorations across Celia's body with his tongue. Mutely expressing all the things he cannot speak aloud. He finds other ways to tell her, his fingers leaving faint trails of ink in their wake. He savors every sound he elicits from her. The entire room trembles as they come together. And though there are a great many fragile objects contained within it, nothing breaks.
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Widge can see the past." Poppet says suddenly. "That's why his stories are so good." "The past is easier," Widget says. "It's already there." "In the stars?" Bailey asks. "No." Widget says. "On people. The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it's still there, the events and t hings that pushed you to where you are now.
Erin MorgensternRead
There is so much that glows in the circus, from flames to lanterns to stars. I have heard the expression “trick of the light” applied to sights within Le Cirque des Reves so frequently that I sometimes suspect the entirety of the circus is itself a complex illusion of illumination” .
Erin MorgensternRead
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I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpenin g exercises.
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We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write.
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The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.
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