Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature.
Chaim PotokRead
I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing involves a challenging process of revision to reveal the true essence of the work.
Chaim Potok compares the act of writing to sculpting a piece of marble, suggesting that the initial creation is just the beginning. The true artistry lies in the revision process, where the writer must refine and chip away at their work to uncover the final, polished piece. This metaphor highlights the importance of perseverance and attention to detail in the craft of writing.
Themes
WritingRevisionCreativityArtistryCraft
In practice
Example use cases
During a writing workshop, this quote could inspire participants to embrace the revision process.
More from Chaim Potok
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A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.
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He taught them that the purpose of a man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life: eating, drinking praying, sleeping. God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly.
Chaim PotokRead
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The poet is never inspired, because he is the master of that which appears to others as inspiration. He does not wait for inspiration to fall out of the heavens like roasted ortolans. He knows how to hunt...He is never inspired because he is unceasingly inspired, because the powers of poetry are always at his disposition, subjected to his will, submissive to his own activity.
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You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not.
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But however measurable, there is much more life in music than mathematics or logic ever dreamed of.
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I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.
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