“You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there’s no such thing as creative writing.”
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Context: You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there’s no such thing as creative writing. I’ve always agreed with that and always refuse to teach it when given the opportunity. He said there is, in fact, only one Creator and we mix. That’s our function, to mix the elements He has given us. See how wonderfully anonymous that leaves us? You can’t say, “I did this; this gross matrix of flesh and blood and sinews and nerves did this.” What nonsense! I’m given these things to make a pattern out of. Something gave it to me.
I’ve always loved the idea of the craftsman, the anonymous man. For instance, I’ve always wanted my books to be called the work of Anon, because Anon is my favorite literary character. If you look through an anthology of poems that go from the far past into the present time, you’ll see that all the poems signed “Anon” have a very specific flavor that is one flavor all the way through the centuries. I think, perhaps arrogantly, of myself as “Anon.” I would like to think that Mary Poppins and the other books could be called back to make that change. But I suppose it’s too late for that.
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P. L. Travers 57
Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist 1899–1996Related quotes

Letter to H.L. Mencken July 28, 1934.

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1910's

From the interview Professione DJ https://issuu.com/massimomarino/docs/viviroma_magazine_aprile_2016/64, Viviromamagazine.com
From the interview by Andrea Belfiore, Professione DJ https://issuu.com/massimomarino/docs/viviroma_magazine_aprile_2016/64, Viviromamagazine.com, April 4, 2016, pp. 64-65 on Issuu.com https://issuu.com/massimomarino/docs/viviroma_magazine_aprile_2016/64.
Original: (it) [Hai un mito, una persona che ammiri più delle altre, con la quale ti piacerebbe collaborare?] Non ho un mito in particolare, mi piacerebbe collaborare con qualsiasi persona che riesce ad esprimere la propria creatività attraverso ciò che sente nel cuore e nell'anima.

[Richard H., Weiss, November 5, 1998, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Times columnist likes to mine a vein of thought, G1]
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“As W. C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.”
Source: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything