If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.
Interpretation
The quote distinguishes between writing formats and emphasizes the unique narrative possibilities of novels.
Bret Easton Ellis expresses the idea that writing a movie and writing a book require different approaches due to the inherent nature of each medium. He believes that while screenplays can efficiently convey ideas visually, the depth, complexity, and exploration of themes in a book can only be achieved through a novelistic approach, suggesting a reverence for the literary form.
In practice
During a writers' workshop, one might use this quote to discuss the differences between screenplay and novel writing.
I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.
You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you
I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation.
But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you.
I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is 'Disappear Here' and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.
But this road doesn't go anywhere,” I told him. “That doesn't matter.” “What does?” I asked, after a little while. “Just that we're on it, dude,” he said.
Americans want beauties, not me. I’m not the Parisian bombshell they expected. Can you see me as a chorus girl? Where’s my feather up the ass? They think I’m sad, they’re dumb. I don’t connect to them
I love being able to reach people directly, but in an ideal scenario, I would not have to rush the release of new music… but the message is still there.
You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.
The thing that was important to me about Hemingway at the time was that Hemingway taught me that you could be a writer and get away with it.
The arts can enrich all of us in this nation as individuals. The arts can enrich all of our communities and the country. And the arts can connect us to each other like nothing else can.
There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
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