Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
Interpretation
Writing involves both the act of creation and the critical evaluation of one's work.
This quote highlights the distinction between simply writing and being an author. While anyone can write down their thoughts and ideas, true authorship requires the ability to recognize the value of one's own writing and the courage to discard what does not meet their standards, demonstrating a commitment to quality and authenticity in their craft.
In practice
During a writing workshop, I used this quote to emphasize the importance of revision to aspiring writers.
It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules.
I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.
Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.
By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.
The books I like to read the most feel like they've been written by somebody who had to write them or go crazy. They had to get them out of their heads. I like that kind of urgency.
Fashion keeps me designing: the love of change, the idea that the next one will be the right one, the nonstop dialogue
I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.
It is only framed in space that beauty blooms; only in space are events, and objects and people unique and significant and therefore beautiful.
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