The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anais NinRead
If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
Interpretation
Writing should be passionate and expressive; otherwise, it lacks value.
In this quote, Anais Nin emphasizes the importance of emotional investment in writing. She argues that true writing must resonate deeply with the writer's feelings and experiences, as it is this authenticity that gives writing its significance and impact in culture.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to encourage students to be more expressive, a teacher could say, 'Remember what Anais Nin said: if you do not breathe through writing, your words will lack the fire they need.'
The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning.
We celebrate peace. Yet we pay no attention to the ways of curing aggression in human beings. And when one sees in psychoanalysis hostility disappearing as people conquer their fears, one wonders if the cure is not there.
The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male drive in western culture. The movie projector is an Apollonian straight-shooter, demonstrating the link between aggression and art. Every pictorial framing is a ritual limitation, a barred precinct.
When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.
The art, the greatness of the music, the experience of the music is what I'm about. I think most African artists have destroyed their artistry by commercialization, and I don't want to belong to that bag.
To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, 'Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.'
The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.
If a story doesn't give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage.
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