The whole excitement for writing anything is quite intense. And for a day or two, you think you've done everything extremely well. The problems start on the third day, and continues for the rest of your life.
Interpretation
Writing brings initial joy and confidence, but challenges emerge that persist throughout the process.
This quote by Tom Stoppard highlights the dual nature of writing as both an exhilarating and frustrating endeavor. Initially, the act of creation brings excitement and a sense of achievement, making the writer believe that everything is perfect. However, as time progresses, self-doubt and criticism arise, underscoring the ongoing struggles that accompany the creative process.
In practice
Using this quote in a writing workshop to encourage participants about the ups and downs of the creative process.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
For me, the glory of my first 25 years as a writer was I could put things off as long as I wanted.
Weirdly enough, if I'm having trouble with a guitar part - not the playing of it but the writing - I'll mess around with echo and other effects, just turn everything up and make it as crazy as can be, and it winds up taking me somewhere. I've found so many guitar parts from echo. It's limitless.
I've gradually realised that what I do best is universes. And I shouldn't be afraid of that.
Art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life.
Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul.
Art is not living. It is the use of living. The artist has the ability to take the living and use it in a certain way and produce art.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.