QuoteProject
I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.
Will Self
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Writing involves refining language by removing unnecessary parts to reveal its essence.

In this quote, Will Self compares writing to sculpture, suggesting that the true art of writing is not about adding more words or elaborate structures, but rather about the process of careful elimination. Just as a sculptor chisels away at stone to reveal the form within, a writer must sift through language, discarding the superfluous to uncover the core message or emotion they wish to express.

Themes

WritingSculptureLanguageArtCreativity

In practice

Example use cases

During a writing workshop, you might share this quote to emphasize the importance of editing.

More from Will Self

Lust was a positive high-tension cable, plugged into my core, activating a near-epileptic seizure of conviction that this was the one thing I had to do in life.
Will SelfRead
When anyone starts out to do something creative - especially if it seems a little unusual - they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism - you learn this as you go on.
Will SelfRead
What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.
Will SelfRead
Sometimes, when I hear people without experience of addiction blame addicts for their behaviour, I feel like saying to them: 'You simply don't understand - how can a child be held responsible for doing such a dreadful thing to himself?' But then again, at other times I have to acknowledge: it was done wilfully.
Will SelfRead
Death, the real simile for disease - for when we are ill, do we not always feel like we are dying, even if it's only a little? - remains, despite our secularism, the most metaphoricised phenomenon of all.
Will SelfRead
The marvellous thing about writing, whether it be fiction or journalism, is that it is simultaneously the most intimate and the most anonymous of meetings between people. It is profoundly intimate in reaching into the psyche of another, at the same time as being devoid of social characteristics, cultural characteristics, economic characteristics.
Will SelfRead

Similar quotes

The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.
Robert HenriRead
She stood lost in eternity wearing a crazy dress, watching the immense sky.
Angela CarterRead
The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write.
Marguerite DurasRead
When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest.
Paul RobesonRead
Often I don't know what the song means until it's finished. Sometimes months later. I don't think that's bad. It implies that I don't know what I'm doing but-I think if you're able to follow your instincts, then that's knowing what you're doing.
David ByrneRead
A poem begins with a lump in the throat
Robert FrostRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.