Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.
Interpretation
Writing should evoke deep emotions and impact both the writer and the reader.
This quote emphasizes that true writing connects on an emotional level, leaving a lasting impression or 'bruise' that signifies the depth of the experience shared between the writer and the reader. It suggests that effective writing resonates with feelings and can profoundly affect both parties involved.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of personal expression through art.
Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.
Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.
Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.
Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything - we need only listen.
There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.
To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.
I'd rather have just one person who reads and feels my work deeply than hundreds of thousands who read it but don't really care about.
I don't try to sanction other people's joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy - you know, like fear, desire or laughter - create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films... The boundaries cannot be defined. It's to each his own.
The crown of literature is poetry.
Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.
For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.... I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.
I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor.
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