The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.
Interpretation
True beauty often exists in plain sight and needs a mindful perspective to be appreciated.
In this quote, Vik Muniz emphasizes that the most remarkable and beautiful aspects of life often occur in our immediate surroundings, yet we frequently overlook them. By encouraging an intentional and attentive gaze, he suggests that we can discover the artistry and wonder that is already present in our daily experiences.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about appreciating the little things in life.
Drawing is not only a way to come up with pictures: drawing is a way to educate your eye to understand visual information, organizing it into a more hierarchical way, a more economical way. When you see something, if you draw often and frequently, you examine a room very differently.
To create anything β whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom β is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic β which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.
The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.
Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.
I value the people who are willing to make themselves vulnerable and share work that is sensitive and maybe even hard to sing sometimes. Because that's the music that provides the most solace and solidarity to the world.
Having a soul, they say, is like taking sadness and turning it into something beautiful.
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