Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.
Interpretation
Write for the passion of it, not for commercial gain.
This quote emphasizes the importance of writing as an art form and a discipline driven by passion. Ann Patchett encourages writers to focus on their love for the craft rather than on financial success, suggesting that authenticity and dedication to the art will lead to more fulfilling creative expression.
In practice
In a writer's workshop to inspire young authors.
Show kindness whenever possible. Show it to the people in front of you, the people coming up behind you, and the people with whom you are running neck and neck. It will vastly improve the quality of your own life, the lives of others, and the state of the world.
There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.
It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.
Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?
Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.
The stars fell one by one into his eyes and burnt.
I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.
When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.
Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I only wantedto build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home
The best art is realized when you can share the experience of making of it and not just the presentation of it, so that the audience is part of the creation and not just part of the consumption. Then it becomes much more full-bodied and robust.
This is the role of writers: to turn their tears into a story - and perhaps into a prayer.
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