The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
Teju ColeRead
The original sense of the word 'influence' is 'to flow into.' For the most part, these writers that I admire... their style flows into me without my intervention, which is what explains the broad range of writers who I've been compared with; it reflects my reading.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Influence in writing is a natural and passive process where styles blend through reading.
In this quote, Teju Cole reflects on the organic nature of influence in writing, suggesting that an author's style is not merely a product of conscious effort but rather a fluid process of absorbing and integrating the styles of various writers. He emphasizes how his own writing is shaped by the diverse influences of the authors he admires, highlighting the interconnectedness of reading and writing.
Themes
InfluenceWritingStyleReadingIntervention
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the creative process in a writing workshop.
More from Teju Cole
All quotes →I'm not trying to be a poet on Twitter; I'm trying to be aware of the fact that a very simple sentence, well written, can have a very moving effect without that person knowing why. There's a deep genetic part of you that somehow, even without your permission, recognizes good language when it arrives.
Teju ColeRead
To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.
Teju ColeRead
We don't experience our lives as plots. If I asked you to tell me what your last week was like, you're not really gonna give me plot. You're gonna give me sort of linked narrative. And I wanted to see how do we bring that into fiction without losing the reader.
Teju ColeRead
Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.
Teju ColeRead
In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.
Teju ColeRead
Similar quotes
Because for whatever reason, even though I want to stay home all the time and be left alone, I want to tell the world who I am now.
Fiona AppleRead
I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.
Francesca Lia BlockRead
I am the eggman They are the eggmen! I am the walrus!
John LennonRead
Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.
Beatrice WardeRead
Acting is something I love. It's a great craft that I have a lot of respect for. But I don't think it's any greater challenge than teaching 8-year-olds or any other career. In my life, I try not to make it more important than it is and I just hope that rubs off on the people around me.
Hugh JackmanRead
To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.
Leo TolstoyRead