Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
Andre GideRead
The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing serves as a means to create a lasting legacy that transcends mortality.
In this quote, Andre Gide expresses the profound motivations behind his writing, suggesting that amidst the various reasons he writes, the most significant ones are deeply personal and hidden. He implies that writing allows him to preserve thoughts, feelings, and experiences, effectively rendering them immune to the inevitability of death, creating a form of immortality through art.
Themes
WritingImmortalityLegacyCreationExpression
In practice
Example use cases
During a literary event, I shared this quote to inspire upcoming authors about the importance of their narratives.
More from Andre Gide
All quotes →Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.
Andre GideRead
Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
Andre GideRead
Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.
Andre GideRead
It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing.
Andre GideRead
It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
Andre GideRead
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