Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad... I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.
Interpretation
The author reflects on the emotional complexities of publishing a book, suggesting that the act of writing is more important than the end result.
In this quote, Nicole Krauss expresses a bittersweet realization that while achieving the milestone of getting a book published is significant, it also brought feelings of sadness. This suggests that the drive to create for the sake of expression and personal significance can sometimes be overshadowed by external pressures and expectations associated with publication. Krauss emphasizes the importance of understanding one's true motivations as a writer beyond just the finished product.
In practice
In a speech about creativity, one could reference this quote to illustrate the emotional journey of artists.
To touch and feel each thing in the world, to know it by sight and by name, and then to know it with your eyes closed so that when something is gone, it can be recognized by the shape of its absence. So that you can continue to possess the lost, because absence is the only constant thing. Because you can get free of everything except the space where things have been.
For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love.
Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance.
Iβve always liked the feeling of traveling light; there is something in me that wants to feel I could leave wherever I am, at any time, without any effort. The idea of being weighed down made me uneasy, as if I lived on the surface of a frozen lake and each new trapping of domestic life - a pot, a chair, a lamp - threatened to be the thing that sent me through the ice.
When we went into the ocean, I watched his body as he dove into the waves, and it gave me a feeling in my stomach that wasn't an ache but something different.
Herman slipped his hand into mine, and I thought, An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand, and the next thing that happened was we kissed each other, and I found I knew how, and I felt happy and sad in equal parts, because I knew that I was falling in love, but it wasn't with him.
I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
Somewhere along the line a convention developed that the opening of a film was just a laundry list of credits. There was no incentive to complicate an area that was settled.
I think there is a big difference between the music business and music. And my relationship is to music, not music business. I think the business will keep changing, but music won't. Music will be there.
Not every song I write is ecstasy. And it can happen only one time. After that, when you sing the same melody and words, it's pleasure, but you don't get wiped out.
You have to be lonely to be a writer
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