It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.
StingRead
If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.
Interpretation
The pressure of the writing profession can be overwhelming, especially when facing writer's block.
This quote by Sting highlights the intense fear and anxiety that can accompany a career in writing, particularly during periods when one struggles to produce new work. It reflects the idea that for writers, their ability to create is deeply tied to their identity and livelihood, making the inability to write a daunting experience that threatens their profession.
In practice
During a writing workshop, one might use this quote to emphasize the emotional struggles writers face.
It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet.
Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness. Given the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose success.
It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do.
I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.
There's no religion but sex and music.
I don't need to manufacture trauma in my life to be creative. I have a big enough reservoir of sadness or emotional trauma to last me.
I have a mess in my head sometimes, and there's something very satisfying about putting it into words. Certainly it's not something that you're in charge of, necessarily, but writing about it, putting it into your words, can be a very powerful experience.
The idea comes to me from outside of me - and is like a gift. I then take the idea and make it my own - that is where the skill lies.
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one.
I discover poetry when I was in elementary school and I was so fascinated by it. Because I realised if you get the right amount of syllables and the right amount of words, in the right rhyme scheme and you put it all together. You make words just bounce of a page.
Artists live with God β but give their little finger to Satan. I sleep with the angels and dream of the devil.
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