The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
James JoyceRead
[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the role of a writer as a creative force who transforms everyday experiences into enduring art.
In this quote, James Joyce describes the writer as a sacred figure who possesses the unique ability to take mundane, everyday experiences—the 'daily bread'—and convert them into something magnificent and timeless—the 'radiant body of everliving life.' This process of transmutation highlights the transformative power of imagination and creativity in writing, elevating personal and shared human experiences into art that resonates through time.
Themes
WriterImaginationTransformationArtExperience
In practice
Example use cases
During a literary workshop, the facilitator quoted Joyce to inspire aspiring authors to see their life experiences as material for their writing.
More from James Joyce
All quotes →I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.
James JoyceRead
If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.
James JoyceRead
Gentle lady, do not sing Sad songs about the end of love; Lay aside sadness and sing How love that passes is enough. Sing about the long deep sleep Of lovers that are dead, and how In the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now.
James JoyceRead
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
James JoyceRead
The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside.
James JoyceRead
Similar quotes
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When I really have to push and grope and scratch and claw to make a story work, that's a telltale sign that maybe something conceptually isn't right.
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There's design, and there's art. Good design is total harmony. There's no better designer than nature - if you look at a branch or a leaf, it's perfect. It's all function. Art is different. It's about emotion. It's about suffering and beauty - but mostly suffering!
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Ay, Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.
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Poetry is the essence of everything, and it’s through deep contact with reality and living fully that you reach poetry. Very often I see photographers cultivating the strangeness or awkwardness of a scene, thinking it is poetry. No. Poetry is two elements which are suddenly conflict — a spark between two elements. But it’s given very seldom, and you can’t look for it. It’s like if you look for inspiration. No, it just comes by enriching yourself and living.
Henri Cartier-BressonRead
The main thing is to write for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. Take off from here.
Seamus HeaneyRead