Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Interpretation
A small error can have significant consequences for a poet's work.
Oscar Wildeβs quote highlights the critical importance of precision in a poet's craft. It underscores the idea that even a minor mistake, such as a misprint, can undermine the integrity and intended expression of a poet's work, emphasizing the meticulous nature of literary creation.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a discussion about the editing process in a writing workshop.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.
When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.
The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship
Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.
He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May.
When I see a story, I ask: is this something I'd like to be in? Is this something I'd like to see? And if I'd like to see it, would I like to tell it?
The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration.'
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