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.
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
One of the ways my first novel failed was that I was too in love with my characters.
Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it...myself included.
People find it hard to get their heads around nominating a computer-generated character, but every time you see Gollum on the screen, that's me who is acting up there - even if it is behind a mass of pixels - and it's my voice you hear.
I wanted to play roles which offered new ways of viewing black women and black people in general- and I have done that. And I have always, whether I needed to pay the rent or not, I've always turned down roles which I thought were stereotypical. And so when I look at my body of work in that respect, I am really happy. Because I feel my work does say something positive and that was what I always set out to do.
People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. Of all the words that have stuck to the ribs of my soul, poetry has been the most filling.
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