QuoteProject
There's nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, 'Well, okay, I'm going to do something of high artistic worth.'
Douglas Adams
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The pursuit of artistic excellence can hinder creativity and writing.

This quote by Douglas Adams highlights the pressure that can come with trying to achieve high artistic standards when writing. It suggests that focusing too much on the outcome or the importance of the work may paralyze the creative process, preventing authors from expressing their ideas freely and authentically.

Themes

ArtWritingCreativityPressureExpression

In practice

Example use cases

In a creative writing workshop, to encourage free expression without judgment.

More from Douglas Adams

Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
Douglas AdamsRead
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water."
Douglas AdamsRead
Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. [...] Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.
Douglas AdamsRead
Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.
Douglas AdamsRead
What the computer in virtual reality enables us to do is to recalibrate ourselves so that we can start seeing those pieces of information that are invisible to us but have become important for us to understand.
Douglas AdamsRead
We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
Douglas AdamsRead

Similar quotes

When I'm dead, I want to be remembered as a musician of some worth and substance.
Freddie MercuryRead
The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at the heart of the cultural elite, who contend that it's not a pill, that it shouldn't be asked to perform some specific function, especially something as egocentric as to 'cheer you up' or to 'make you a more empathetic person.'
Alain De BottonRead
When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That's what I always find myself short on and what I have to struggle to achieve in order that the work might live.
Junot DiazRead
The long path from material through function to creative work has only one goal: to create order out of the desperate confusion of our time.
Ludwig Mies Van Der RoheRead
If you write fiction, you're by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don't have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you're not lonely anymore.
Denis JohnsonRead
One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing. I did that with 'World's Fair,' as with all of them. The inventions of the book come as discoveries.
E. L. DoctorowRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.