The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.
Interpretation
A writer needs to empathize with all people while simultaneously feeling a sense of detachment to gain true insight.
Julian Barnes emphasizes the dual nature of a writer's existence: they must connect deeply with human experiences and emotions while also maintaining an outsider's perspective. This unique combination allows them to observe and convey truths about life with clarity and depth, as their outcast status provides a distinct lens through which to understand the world.
In practice
In a writing workshop to illustrate the importance of empathy in storytelling.
(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.
It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.
But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.
And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61]
Every love story is a potential grief story.
Poetry at its best can do you a lot of harm.
The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.
I find campfire stories and urban legends are kind of the bread and butter that inspires a lot of people who are making horror and thriller. There is a nugget of truth behind these sort of cautionary tales.
The dancer of the future will be one whose body & soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of the soul will have become the movement of the body.
Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.
It's important that when you do standup, you do small places like coffee shops and also big places like colleges. It helps you find the little nuances in your set that don't work, and you can shave off the excess.
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