A studio, like a poem, is an intimacy and a freedom you can look out from, into each part of your life and a little beyond.
Jane HirshfieldRead
My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part of, and then press it a little further.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the role of a writer (and human) in deeply experiencing life and expressing those experiences creatively.
Jane Hirshfield conveys that the primary responsibility of both a writer and a human is to fully immerse oneself in the richness of life's experiences. This deep engagement with the world allows individuals to explore and articulate the nuances of their feelings, ultimately pushing the boundaries of understanding and creativity through their work.
Themes
ExperienceWritingHumanityCreativityLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creative writing, a participant could use this quote to underline the importance of personal experience in storytelling.
More from Jane Hirshfield
All quotes βWhat we want from art is whatever is missing from the lives we are already living and making. Something is always missing, and so art-making is endless.
Jane HirshfieldRead
as some strings, untouched, sound when no one is speaking. So it was when love slipped inside us.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Tree It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books-- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Jane HirshfieldRead
I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.
Jane HirshfieldRead
Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.
Jane HirshfieldRead
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You want to say as little as you can and get the most punch out of it, always with the knowledge that people are not in the theater to listen to your music so much as to respond to the movie. You're a part of that experience.
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The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.
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Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.
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I paint and work as a sculptor, and I see architecture as an art... If you follow this approach you can use techniques to the service of man and to the service of an artistic idea, and beauty.
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Looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather--rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm--is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there.
Andy GoldsworthyRead