To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Aldous HuxleyRead
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
Interpretation
Writers create to express their true selves while also impacting others.
This quote by Aldous Huxley highlights the dual purpose of writing: it serves as a means of communication to influence an audience, but fundamentally, it is a reflection of the writer's innermost self. Writers seek to connect with others through their work, yet their ultimate goal is often to explore and reveal their own identity and thoughts.
In practice
During a writing workshop, a facilitator might quote this to emphasize the personal nature of writing.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country.
On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
No man ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife.
The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much.
We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.
The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
Don't use your brain to play it, let your feelings guide your fingers.
For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.
All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty.
When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.
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