As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the imaginative process of creating believable characters in fiction.
Julia Glass expresses the unique role of a fiction writer, emphasizing the intricate task of breathing life into invented characters. The writer's craft lies in making the fictional tangible and relatable, blurring the lines between reality and imagination.
In practice
In a workshop on creative writing, this quote can inspire students to explore character development.
I write because I'm in love with language; because I like working for myself, inside my head; and because it's the only way I know to make a stab at answering the never-ending questions of the heart that arise simply from the everyday living of our lives.
I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.
My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.
I believe that one of the secret engines that allows cinema to work, and have the marvelous power over us that it does, is the fact that for thousands of years we have spent eight hours every night in a 'cinematic' dream-state, and so are familiar with this version of reality.
What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... Itβs this in-between that Iβm calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one - which is really the realm of the artist.
In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.
Sudden Light I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the light around the shore.
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