We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
Interpretation
Writers must embrace their own unique perspectives and limitations rather than attempting to conform to a universal standard.
This quote by Zadie Smith emphasizes the importance of authenticity in writing. It suggests that writers are not merely expressing whatever they wish to express; instead, they are influenced by their individual experiences, capabilities, and identities. This highlights the idea that true creativity comes from personal authenticity and recognizing one's own voice within the constraints of one's abilities.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to encourage students to embrace their unique voices.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to.
"Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible--a refuge, a magical world where anyone can go, where all kinds of people can come together, and anything can happen. We are limited only by our imaginations.
The Creator wants us to drum. He wants us to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants. After all, we have already corrupted the world with power and greed....which hasn't gotten us anywhere - now's the time to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants.
It was the moment I learned acting is not acting out. After that light went on, I spent the rest of my life trying to figure out how to make other people realize it.
You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.
For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don't believe in yourself.
I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.
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