This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.
I don't think I would have been a writer if I hadn't been a mother. I wanted to construct something that contained some of these feelings that I had, some of these discoveries or revelations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being a mother deeply influenced Carol Shields' writing, driving her to express her feelings and insights through literature.
In this quote, Carol Shields reflects on how her experiences and emotions as a mother shaped her identity as a writer. She emphasizes the importance of personal experiences in creating art, highlighting that her revelations and feelings about motherhood inspired her to develop narratives that capture the complexity of these emotions. This connection between life experiences and creative expression illustrates the profound impact of motherhood on her literary work.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a literary festival, this quote could resonate with aspiring writers reflecting on their personal experiences.
More from Carol Shields
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As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.
The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.
It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and he said to me, I was maybe 9, and he said to me, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off, put a blanket on you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right. ... Then the best part of it is that when you wake up, for the first 15 seconds, you have no idea where you are. You're just alive. That's all you know. And it's bliss, it's absolute bliss.
You're not really ready to live unless you know what you're willing to die for.
They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.
The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.