For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.
Interpretation
The writer prioritizes storytelling over preconceived ideas or agendas.
In this quote, Khaled Hosseini emphasizes the importance of the narrative in his writing process. He suggests that authentic stories emerge organically, without being constrained by broad concepts or specific goals, highlighting the purity and instinctiveness of creative expression.
In practice
This quote can be used in a writing workshop to inspire aspiring authors to trust their storytelling instincts.
You're gutless. It's how you were made. And that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you've never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is... God help him.
There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not break. - Amir
I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.
And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.
The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.
Every song is like a kid. How can you have that many kids and have a favorite? Which one do I like to hang most with? Probably the one that I haven't hung most with recently.
I took 'Grease' to play my trump card, my voice, and get attention that would lead to auditions for serious work like 'Angels in America.' But I backed myself into a corner with 'Grease,' and it took me 17 years to get out.
A poet's work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
I love to go to the studio and stay there 10 or 12 hours a day. I love it. What is it? I don't know. It's life.
What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life.
I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.
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