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.
I really believe that if you practice enough you could paint the 'Mona Lisa' with a two-inch brush.
My life, my reading, everything about me revolves around the cinema. So for me, cinema is life, and vice-versa.
When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers.
Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.
In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it.
Dreaming about being an actress, is more exciting then being one.
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