Originally delivered as a lecture (late 1927); Pure Poetry: Notes for a Lecture The Creative Vision (1960)
Context: For the musician, before he has begun his work, all is in readiness so that the operation of his creative spirit may find, right from the start, the appropriate matter and means, without any possibility of error. He will not have to make this matter and means submit to any modification; he need only assemble elements which are clearly defined and ready-made. But in how different a situation is the poet! Before him is ordinary language, this aggregate of means which are not suited to his purpose, not made for him. There have not been physicians to determine the relationships of these means for him; there have not been constructors of scales; no diapason, no metronome, no certitude of this kind. He has nothing but the coarse instrument of the dictionary and the grammar. Moreover, he must address himself not to a special and unique sense like hearing, which the musician bends to his will, and which is, besides, the organ par excellence of expectation and attention; but rather to a general and diffused expectation, and he does so through a language which is a very odd mixture of incoherent stimuli.
“He had let himself be bulldozed by the odds against him. He promised himself never again to pay any attention to the odds, but only to the issues.”
Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 4, “The Glory Road” (p. 45)
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Robert A. Heinlein 557
American science fiction author 1907–1988Related quotes
“He is so corrupt that he would willingly pay for the pleasure of selling himself.”
Pt. 3, Ch. 3
Sentimental Education (1869)
Source: Between Man and Man (1965), p. 178 -->
"He who had dug his own grave", from To Abel and Cain, commemorating his escape from the Nazis by his 1943 killing of an SS guard who had been assigned to watch as he dug his own grave, as quoted in "10 Amazing Ways People Survived The Holocaust" by Alan Boyle at Listverse (9 November 2014) http://listverse.com/2014/11/09/10-amazing-ways-people-survived-the-holocaust/
No. I won't promise that. Get a life, you know.
Private meeting with the Building Trades Union (9 September 2015), WikiLeaks. Quoted in "Clinton to environmentalists: 'Get a life'" http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-to-environmentalists-get-a-life/article/2604626 by John Siciliano, Washington Examiner (15 October 2016).
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