Fiction writing is just an excuse to go discover interesting things.
Interpretation
Fiction writing allows authors to explore and learn about the world creatively.
In this quote, Anthony Doerr suggests that the practice of writing fiction is more than just storytelling; it serves as a gateway for writers to seek out and uncover unique experiences, insights, and knowledge. Writing fiction provides an opportunity to delve into diverse subjects, imagination, and the human experience, thus enriching both the writer's and the reader's understanding of the world.
In practice
During a writing workshop, to inspire participants to embrace the creative process.
The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we're not careful, pretty soon we're gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.
Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.
I used to think...that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place...But now I know that life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life. And we're all very lucky to be part of something like that.
Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.
I don't believe in reincarnation. I feel like we're here for such an appallingly brief period of time. I believe we each get this one trip, and if we're really, really fortunate, maybe we get 70 or 80 years on Earth.
My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.
People say to me, 'You seem to have made this conscious decision to do independent films'. In reality, I haven't. After each movie, I always think, 'how different can I possibly be? Is this going to challenge me, is this going to inspire me, and is this going to make me love my job more than I already do?'
Far from being dead, physical media has years of life left and must be preserved because there is no better alternative.
All the masterpieces of art contain both light and shadow. A happy life is not one filled with only sunshine, but one which uses both light and shadow to produce beauty.
Through most of my career, I've made a decent living making movies no one wants to see.
Birds in flight fascinate me. I admire eagles and falcons. Iβm inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. Itβs so elaborate. In fact I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women.
Style is very personal. It has nothing to do with fashion. Fashion is over quickly. Style is forever.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.