Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.
Interpretation
Writers must be attentive to both external conversations and the internal voices they create in their work.
Jeanette Winterson emphasizes the importance of listening as a fundamental skill for writers. This listening involves not only paying attention to the world around them but also being tuned into the unique characters and narratives they conceive, suggesting that the act of writing is deeply intertwined with the ability to hear and understand diverse perspectives.
In practice
In a workshop on creative writing, to emphasize the importance of character development.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
The cool thing about dope black style becoming in style is that the industry has no choice but to try and reduplicate that.
A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
On acting to daughter Isabella Rossellini: Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.
I discover what I mean as I write. That can be both terrifically exciting and very dangerous, because when you look at your words later, you wonder, 'Did I really mean that, or am I just making verbal patterns?'
Fine music without devotion is but a splendid garment upon a corpse.
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