It's certainly true that when I was young, writing seemed to me so important that I would have sacrificed almost anything to it ... Because I thought of the world in which I wrote -- the world I created -- as somehow much more enormously alive than the world I was actually living in.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the intense passion for writing and the belief in the vividness of the fictional world compared to reality.
Alice Munro expresses her deep commitment to writing during her youth, indicating that she valued her creative world to such an extent that she would be willing to give up significant aspects of her life for it. This passion illustrates the powerful connection between a writer's imagination and their perception of reality, suggesting that the act of creation can lead to a more vibrant existence than the everyday world.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at a writers' conference to inspire young authors about the significance of their craft.
Sometimes our connection is frayed, it is in danger, it seems almost lost. Views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin. Wouldn't we rather have a destiny to submit to, than, something that claims us, anything, instead of such flimsy choices, arbitrary days?
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.
A story is not like a road to follow... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside it altered by being viewed from these windows.
The aim of our studies is to prove that color is the most relative means of artistic expression, that we never really perceive what color is physically.
The truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time.
My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.
Photography is the truth if it’s being handled by a truthful person.
I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality... to protect myself.
If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats
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