Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
Interpretation
Writing involves both the act of creation and the critical evaluation of one's work.
This quote highlights the distinction between simply writing and being an author. While anyone can write down their thoughts and ideas, true authorship requires the ability to recognize the value of one's own writing and the courage to discard what does not meet their standards, demonstrating a commitment to quality and authenticity in their craft.
In practice
During a writing workshop, I used this quote to emphasize the importance of revision to aspiring writers.
It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules.
I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.
No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.
I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball.
Performance is there, and if you are not there in that moment it happened, it just stays in the memory. It's so immaterial and something this immaterial is very difficult to collect. Its difficult to buy, its how we can buy immaterial art.
A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.
Through music I either tame my demons or unleash them and allow them to be what they are. I don't want the music to be about provocation, I want the music to bring you to a place where you feel at home
This is the theory… that anything that is art… is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it’s irritating.
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