Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. _x000D_ On the best days, all three.
Interpretation
Writing serves multiple purposes: it can be an expression of creativity, a protest, or a means of making things right.
Teju Cole's quote reflects the multifaceted nature of writing. It can be an artistic endeavor ('writing as writing'), a form of protest or rebellion against the status quo ('writing as rioting'), and a way to convey truths or rectify injustices ('writing as righting'). On the most fulfilling occasions, writing embodies all three aspects, showcasing its power to influence, create, and heal.
In practice
Using this quote in a writing workshop to inspire participants about the power of their words.
The original sense of the word 'influence' is 'to flow into.' For the most part, these writers that I admire... their style flows into me without my intervention, which is what explains the broad range of writers who I've been compared with; it reflects my reading.
The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
I'm not trying to be a poet on Twitter; I'm trying to be aware of the fact that a very simple sentence, well written, can have a very moving effect without that person knowing why. There's a deep genetic part of you that somehow, even without your permission, recognizes good language when it arrives.
To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.
We don't experience our lives as plots. If I asked you to tell me what your last week was like, you're not really gonna give me plot. You're gonna give me sort of linked narrative. And I wanted to see how do we bring that into fiction without losing the reader.
Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.
Music is the framework around the silence.
The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
I have an impulse to write all over the orange walls- I need an alphabet of endings ripped out of books, of hands pulled off of clocks, of cold stones, of shoes filled with nothing but wind.
If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.
My wedding dress is a piece of art that I'll treasure forever. It was designed and created by Zac Posen. I gave him only the tiniest bit of direction when he started, and the end product was more beautiful than anything I could have imagined.
Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.