By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.
William TrevorRead
People run away to be alone,' he said. Some people had to be alone.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that solitude can be necessary for certain individuals, highlighting the complexity of human relationships.
William Trevor's quote underscores the emotional and psychological need for solitude that some individuals experience. While many seek companionship, there are times when being alone becomes essential for personal reflection, healing, or simply to escape the overwhelming nature of social interactions. This dichotomy speaks to the varied ways people navigate their relationships and their inner lives.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of mental health, one might quote Trevor to highlight the need for personal space.
By the end, you should be inside your character, actually operating from within somebody else, and knowing him pretty well, as that person knows himself or herself. You're sort of a predator, an invader of people.
The capacity you're thinking of is imagination; without it there can be no understanding, indeed no fiction.
My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so: I am a storyteller.
I read hungrily and delightedly, and have realized since that you canβt write unless you read.
Take a look at me now, cause there's just an empty space. And you coming back to me is against all odds and that's what I've got to face.
We might have to broaden our scope of how we think about where women are vulnerable, because different things make different women vulnerable.
Men say they love independence in a woman, but they don't waste a second demolishing it brick by brick.
It was strange to see someone you have only known alone begin interacting with other people, for that somebody known to you disappears and is replaced by a different, more complex, person. You watch him revolve in this new company, revealing new facets, and there is nothing you can do but hope you like these other sides as much as you like the side that seemed whole when it faced only you.
I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.
We talk about feelings. And about sex. And about bodies, and their gratification, violation, repair, decoration, deferred, maybe permanently deferred, mortality. Feelings are a bodily thing, and respecting them is called, is, kindness.
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