Novel-writing is, for the novelist, a game of let's pretend.
Interpretation
Novel-writing involves imagination and creativity, akin to playing a game of make-believe.
Philip Roth suggests that writing novels is a creative act that requires a sense of imagination and the ability to envision different scenarios and characters, much like children play games where they pretend to be someone else. This playful approach is essential for novelists as they craft their narratives and explore human experiences through fiction.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to encourage students, one could say, 'Remember, novel-writing is just a game of let's pretend.'
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
The flavor of wine is like delicate poetry.
When I was working upon the ABC books, I wanted to show different ways that mainstream comics could viably have gone, that they didn't have to follow 'Watchmen' and the other 1980s books down this relentlessly dark route. It was never my intention to start a trend for darkness. I'm not a particularly dark individual.
The essence of cinema is editing.
I always felt that I was a writer, that was what I had to do.
I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.
Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.
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