There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of freedom in artistic expression, even when facing personal vulnerability.
William T. Vollmann highlights the struggle between personal embarrassment and the necessity for unfettered expression in art and language. He acknowledges the natural human concern about others' opinions but asserts the need for art to remain a space where anything can be explored and expressed freely, untouched by societal judgments.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of vulnerability in creative writing, this quote can be cited to illustrate the necessity of honesty in art.
Everybody is an expert on one thing - that's what I learned in my high school journalism class - and that's, of course, his own life. And everybody deserves to live and have his story told. And if it doesn't seem like an interesting story, then that's the failure of the listener, or the journalist who retells it badly.
When I'm dying, I want to think I did what I felt was best for the words I was writing. This may mean, at any time, that I won't be publishable anymore.
Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them.
When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.
Personally I always feel like I could use a little more of poetry apothegmatic power in my own work but we're always lacking something.
Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.
For me, choosing between fiction and nonfiction is really only about picking the right tool for the job.
In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route.
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