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.
Interpretation
Self-doubt is essential for self-improvement and creativity in writing.
In this quote, Colette emphasizes the importance of self-doubt as a critical virtue for writers. She suggests that doubt allows writers to reflect on their work and remain humble, and once they lose that sense of questioning, it may signal the end of their creative journey. Self-doubt is portrayed not as a weakness, but rather as a necessary component of artistic integrity and growth.
In practice
In a writing workshop, discussing how self-doubt can lead to better revision processes.
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.
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.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
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.
It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae that men are to be helped.
Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Donβt squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.
Cheap booze is a false economy.
It's pretty unhealthy to obsess over what people think about you.
Faith is the ability to see things that don't yet exist. Faith, though, can turn difficulty into reality, positive reality.
Faith is like radar that sees through the fog -- the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.
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