The Paris Review interview
Context: Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity. When cockerels confront each other and daren’t fight, they busily start pecking imaginary grains off to the side. That’s displaced activity. Much of what we do at any level is a bit like that, I fancy. But hard to know which is which. On the other hand, the machinery has to be kept running. The big problem for those who write verse is keeping the machine running without simply exercising evasion of the real confrontation. If Ulanova, the ballerina, missed one day of practice, she couldn’t get back to peak fitness without a week of hard work. Dickens said the same about his writing—if he missed a day he needed a week of hard slog to get back into the flow.
“Why illustrate a great piece of writing whose very advocacy and evocation and efficacy lies within its very existence as writing?”
"105 Years of Illustrated Text" in the Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 5 No. 1.
105 Years of Illustrated Text
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Peter Greenaway 266
British film director 1942Related quotes
“From its very start, reading is writings apotheosis.”
Beginnings, p. 179.
A History of Reading (1996)
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal
Context: The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic or eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith,—that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery on the other hand is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. When the "cross" became the "foolishness" of the cross, it took possession of the masses.
On his writing inspiration in “Interview with Rudolfo Anaya” https://ebuah.uah.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/10017/4986/Interview%20with%20Rudolfo%20Anaya.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (CARMEN FLYS JUNQUERA, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares)
On Money and wealth
Source: https://sheleadsafrica.org/20-powerful-chimamanda-adichie-quotes-for-todays-boss-women/
A 1989 interview with Granta magazine founder Bill Buford. Reprinted in Adbusters Magazine #71.
“There are very few innocent sentences in writing.”