No one can fill those of your needs that you won't let show.
Bill WithersRead
I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel. I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of looking outward to understand the world rather than being self-absorbed.
Bill Withers expresses a profound insight about creativity and perception. By choosing to 'look out at the world through a window,' he suggests that artists and individuals can gain a richer perspective by engaging with their surroundings and experiences, rather than being trapped in their own reflections. This idea promotes empathy, awareness, and a broader understanding of life, contrasting the limiting nature of focusing solely on oneself.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one could quote this to encourage embracing new experiences.
No one can fill those of your needs that you won't let show.
Sometimes in our lives we all have pain. We all have sorrow. But if we are wise we know that there's always tomorrow.
Lean on me, when you're not strong and I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on.
I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you.
I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel.
I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.
So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once.
What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.
I'm a great believer in not over-thinking lyrics. You might become technically better as a songwriter, but you lose what originally made your songs great.
Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures , culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood.
Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.
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