That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
Interpretation
Writing often emerges from personal struggles and deep emotional pain.
Edna O'Brien emphasizes that the process of writing is deeply intertwined with human suffering and emotional turmoil. It suggests that profound experiences, especially those that are painful or challenging, can lead to the creation of art, as writers channel their afflictions into their work, revealing the intricate relationship between personal hardship and creativity.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of art, one might reference this quote to highlight how personal struggles can inspire great creativity.
Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.
Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.
Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.
Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.
One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.
I thought that was a pretty stupid argument, really, because it's the final product that matters. The look of the film, however it's done, is still the cinematographer's vision in my mind. People said the same when color film came in, didn't they? The world evolves, and image-making evolves.
I sort of recognize it, as opposed to shaping it. Oh, that's a good idea, that's a good line. I wonder where I can use that. And when you get into a rhyme group like 'not,' you got a lot of rhymes, you got a lot of choices. The more you do it, the luckier you get.
The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship
Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.
It's a product of two poles - there's the pole of the one who makes the work, and the pole of the one who looks at it. I give the latter as much importance as the one who makes it.
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