If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the daily struggle and inspiration of a writer encountering the blank page.
John Updike's quote captures the essence of the creative process, highlighting the mixture of anxiety and inspiration that writers face each day. The 'characters' symbolize the creations of the writer's imagination, which greet him each morning, ready to embark on a journey of storytelling, despite the challenges that the blank page presents. The metaphor of 'dazzling quicksand' suggests that the crafting of narratives can be both mesmerizing and treacherous, requiring the writer to navigate through uncertainty to achieve progress.
Themes
WritingCreativityImaginationBlank PageProgress
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, to encourage beginners: 'Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces...'
More from John Updike
All quotes βDost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. _x000D_ _x000D_ Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John UpdikeRead
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
John UpdikeRead
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
John UpdikeRead
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
John UpdikeRead
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
John UpdikeRead
Similar quotes
There's this idea that it's all natural, but everything's been staged to look natural. It is also an invention. It's just that my inventions are different. I often get asked about my artifice, but isn't fashion based on the idea that we can create a fantasy?
Lady GagaRead
One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture.
John SteinbeckRead
To win applause one must write stuff so simple that a coachman might sing it.
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartRead
Photographing expresses human desire to preserve passing time. It is like a man struggling with time that elapses, and in general - a desire to preserve oneself.
Ryszard KapuscinskiRead
Dressing well is a form of good manners.
Tom FordRead
First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something.
T.C. BoyleRead