I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that you get me wet. Make up your mind, Mr. Writer, and for once in your life be the flower that smells rather than the chronicler of the aroma. There's not much pleasure in writing what you live. The challenge is to live what you write.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of experiencing life fully rather than merely describing it.
Eduardo Galeano's quote suggests that true writing comes from living vividly and experiencing emotions intensely. He argues that instead of just chronicling experiences like an observer, a writer should actively engage with life and embody the emotions and sensations they wish to convey in their work. This active participation will enrich their writing and connect them more deeply with their audience.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to encourage participants to engage deeply with their feelings.
Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.
It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he'll put his job on the line.
We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.
History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.
Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.
A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.
To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.
Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'
The radio is playing jazz, and I listen to the sound of the trumpet playing a solo until I become that sound.
Is the 'black designer' label there to warn everyone not to have the same level of expectations for me, or is it some type of prize? I just want to work in an even playing field where I can get press for my work and not just my race and my personal views on it.
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