A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons.
Interpretation
A writer often needs intense emotions and experiences to fuel their creativity.
Philip Roth suggests that the complexities of a writer's mind, often exacerbated by their struggles and unique perspectives, are essential for creativity. The reference to 'poisons' indicates that writers may draw inspiration from their challenges and darker experiences, which enables them to create profound and impactful art.
In practice
In a discussion about the challenges of writing, this quote emphasizes the essential role of personal struggles in the creative process.
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
The Arts are man's most useless ... and essential ... activity.
Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow.
I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.
I am in the mood to dissolve in the sky.
A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
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