Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As if some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--Only this and nothing more.
Interpretation
This quote encapsulates an atmosphere of mystery and curiosity during a moment of introspection.
In this passage, Edgar Allan Poe sets a melancholic and eerie scene as the narrator reflects on forgotten knowledge while feeling tired and vulnerable. The midnight hour enhances the sense of suspense as he hears a tapping at his door, representing the intrusion of the unknown and perhaps the inevitability of confronting one's thoughts and fears.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the creative process in literature.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
No sensible author wants anything but praise.
Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.
The radio has so many rules, and songs don't. You don't necessarily write to a rule book unless you're, like, just doing it professionally, which has never been my thing.
The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!
Cinema is not about format, and it's not about venue. Cinema is an approach. Cinema is a state of mind on the part of the filmmaker. I've seen commercials that have cinema in them, and I've seen Oscar-winning movies that don't. I'm fine with this.
Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
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