When writing loses touch with the beautiful surface of the world, it loses its way. You always want to be in touch with how things look and what people say and what they call their dogs.
Garrison KeillorRead
All fiction comes from a little bit of reality, otherwise it would have no relevance. The fun is in innovation, take something real like this fair, and make it something larger than life.
Interpretation
Fiction is inspired by reality, and creativity allows us to transform real experiences into extraordinary stories.
Garrison Keillor emphasizes the connection between fiction and reality, suggesting that the best stories are rooted in authentic experiences. He points out that while fiction may elevate elements of reality, its relevance and engagement stem from these real-life inspirations. The essence of storytelling lies in the ability to innovate and expand upon ordinary events, creating narratives that resonate on a larger scale.
In practice
This quote can inspire writers during a creative writing workshop.
When writing loses touch with the beautiful surface of the world, it loses its way. You always want to be in touch with how things look and what people say and what they call their dogs.
Travel is the art form available to Everyman. You sit in the coffee shop in a strange city and nobody knows who you are, or cares, and so you shed your checkered past and your motley credentials and you face the day unarmed ... And onward we go and some day in the distant future, we will stop and turn around in astonishment to see all the places we've been and the heroes we were.
Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I won't feel so thankful then.
I have taken so many wrong turns and been so careless with precious things and managed to lose, or break, or leave out in the rain so much that I loved.
When you wage war on the public schools, you're attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You're not a conservative, you're a vandal.
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.
I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action.
Singing intimately is almost like thinking into a microphone, so it helps to have the song buried inside you.
Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.
Music at times is more like perfume than mathematics.
It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.
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