Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.
Alex HaleyRead
That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing transforms raw ideas into meaningful content through a process of development.
In this quote, Alex Haley emphasizes the creative process involved in writing, comparing it to cooking where various ingredients blend and transform into a cohesive dish. It suggests that just as raw ingredients require time and careful attention to become a gourmet meal, so too do words and ideas need to simmer in a writer's mind before they transform into polished, impactful writing.
Themes
WritingCreativityTransformationProcessExpression
In practice
Example use cases
A writer's workshop could use this quote to discuss the importance of allowing ideas to mature.
More from Alex Haley
All quotes βTying the little folks with the older folks is a great and powerful tool to preserve and to protect the family and the individual.
Alex HaleyRead
I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.
Alex HaleyRead
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
Alex HaleyRead
Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
Alex HaleyRead
I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.
Alex HaleyRead
Similar quotes
A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
Vladimir NabokovRead
I think the rhythm is like the spine of the piece. If you change that, then the body that forms around it is changed as well.
Peter GabrielRead
If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.
Patrick NessRead
A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain.
David WhyteRead
That's what's nice about directing a film and having it done: There's nothing more I can do about it. It's done. That's it. All I can do is let it go and hope that people are kind to it.
Tom HanksRead
The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer
Alfred De MussetRead