The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
Interpretation
The act of creating sentences allows writers to explore the unknown and inspire others with their creativity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote highlights the profound impact of sentence construction as a gateway to imagination and exploration. When a writer embarks on crafting sentences, they venture into uncharted territories of thought and emotion, creating pathways that others can follow and find joy in the creative process. This act not only showcases the beauty of language but also ignites a sense of wonder and inspiration in those who engage with it.
In practice
In a speech about the power of literature, one might quote Emerson to emphasize the role of writers as explorers.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
If you set out to write an adjective novel, you're setting out to write a mediocre novel; your allegiance is to the adjective, not to the story, and then that just sucks all the joy right out of it.
A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.
I listen to everything - from Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette all the way down to rap like Scarface, UGK and Lauryn Hill.
I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.
I cannot life for life itself: but for the words which stay the flux. My life, I feel, will not be lived until there are books and stories which relive it perpetually in time. I forget too easily how it was, and shrink to the horror of the here and now, with no past and no future. Writing breaks open the vaults of the dead and the skies behind which the prophesying angels hide. The mind makes and makes, spinning its web.
When you notice something clearly and see it vividly, it then becomes sacred.
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