You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of empathy and emotional depth in storytelling.
In this quote, Charles Yu suggests that to tell a compelling story, one must not only develop emotional connections (symbolized by growing a heart) but also be ready to confront and deconstruct one's own emotions (smashing the first heart). This duality highlights the intricate and often painful process of storytelling, where personal experiences and emotional truths must be explored and expressed, often through a lens of vulnerability.
In practice
In a writing workshop, this quote can inspire participants to inject more emotion into their characters.
I had forgotten: this is what it feels like to live in time. The lurching forward, the sensation of falling of a cliff into darkness, and then landing abruptly, surprised, confused, and then starting the whole process again in the next moment, doing that over and over again, falling into each instant of time and then climbing back up only to repeat the process.
I am transcribing a book that I have, in a sense, not yet written, and in another sense, have always written, and in another sense, am currently writing, and in another sense, am always writing, and in another sense, will never write.
All of her heart, a meaningless phrase, but correct and precise, too. She used her heart to love him, not her head, and not her words and not her thoughts or ideas or feelings or any other vehicle or object or device people use to deliver love or love-like things.
Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of it.
Maybe we spend most of our decades being someone else, avoiding ourselves, maybe a man is only himself, his true self, for a few days in his entire life.
Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart
Some of the most intense affairs are between actors and characters. There's a fire in the human heart and we jump into it with the same obsession as we have with our lovers.
My only interest is in sharing great music with more and more people.
The important thing is not to be too comfortable when you're writing. Noise in the street? That's good. The computer goes down? That's good. All these things are good. It has to be a little bit of a struggle.
I think there's a lot of similarity between what people try to do with religion with what they want from art. In fact, I very specifically think that they are same thing. Not that religion and art are the same, but that they both tap into the same need we have for surrender.
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