I turned on the pillow with a little moan, and at this juncture Jeeves entered with the vital oolong. I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw hat.
P. G. WodehouseRead
I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.
Interpretation
The quote contrasts two approaches to writing novels: one that is light and entertaining, and another that strives for a deeper, more serious exploration of life.
P. G. Wodehouse presents two distinct styles of novel writing: one that is whimsical and amusing, embodying a carefree and entertaining spirit, and the other that delves into the complexities and realities of life, regardless of its seriousness. This distinction highlights the diversity of literary expression and the varying intentions behind storytelling, suggesting that both approaches hold value in the world of literature.
In practice
During a writers' conference, to highlight different styles of storytelling.
I turned on the pillow with a little moan, and at this juncture Jeeves entered with the vital oolong. I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw hat.
While not exactly disgruntled, he was far from feeling gruntled. He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season
It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.
If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats.
My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.
A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is To meet an antique book In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think, His venerable hand to take, And warming in our own, A passage back, or two, to make To times when he was young. His quaint opinions to inspect, His knowledge to unfold On what concerns our mutual mind, The literature of old.
Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I'm a sloppy filmmaker.
What I want to give in the theatre is beauty, that's what I want to give.
You want to say as little as you can and get the most punch out of it, always with the knowledge that people are not in the theater to listen to your music so much as to respond to the movie. You're a part of that experience.
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