Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.
Interpretation
Writing should evoke deep emotions and impact both the writer and the reader.
This quote emphasizes that true writing connects on an emotional level, leaving a lasting impression or 'bruise' that signifies the depth of the experience shared between the writer and the reader. It suggests that effective writing resonates with feelings and can profoundly affect both parties involved.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of personal expression through art.
Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.
Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.
Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.
Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything - we need only listen.
There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.
To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.
Century-old records are the closest thing we have to a time machine. To listen to the voice of Theodore Roosevelt or the piano playing of Claude Debussy is to feel the years falling away like autumn leaves from a maple tree.
All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.
The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
When we free ourselves we are not freed into a void. When we free ourselves we are freed into a dimension in which Art is an obligation.
One has to guard against a formula that is good for everything, that can interpret reality in addition to the other arts, and that rather than creating can only result in a style, or a stylization.
I don't think there will ever be a time I don't write, and I hope there will never be a time I don't act.
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