“I don't see the world like that all the time, but I see the world like that a lot.
So what am I going to do about that?”

— Elizabeth Hand

Strange Horizons interview (2004)
Context: I don't think all artists are mad, but there is statistical medical evidence that a lot of creative people suffer from various mood disorders. They fall somewhere on the spectrum of being bipolar, of being borderline autistic and so on. These things are there. Now of course these days you can go to college and when you come out you are a professional artist and you can run a gallery as a business and have a career. That is a very valid way for an artist to make a living. But it doesn't make for a very interesting story. It doesn't have a lot of mythic subtext. … For me a lot of the world really is like that. The scenes in my book that people describe as "such a hallucinatory sequence" … I don't see the world like that all the time, but I see the world like that a lot.
So what am I going to do about that? Am I going to go crazy? Am I going to institutionalize myself? Am I going to go and work in a cubicle as a telemarketer so that I don't give vent to that? Or am I going to take that and channel it into my work? It is a gift.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I don't see the world like that all the time, but I see the world like that a lot. So what am I going to do about that?" by Elizabeth Hand?

Elizabeth Hand 33

American writer 1957

Related quotes

“I'm like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

“You see, if you say something positive like the whole of life – all living things – is descended from a single common ancestor which lived about 4,000 million years ago and that we are all cousins, well that is an exceedingly important and true thing to say and that is what I want to say. Somebody who is religious sees that as threatening and so I am represented as attacking religion, and I am forced into responding to their reaction. But you do not have to see my main purpose as attacking religion. Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading. And that is what is so exciting for me.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

[1995-04-28, Kam Patel, Going the whole hog, Times Higher Education, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=97718&sectioncode=26]

“I am an optimist... I choose to be. There is a lot of darkness in our world, there is a lot of pain and you can choose to see that or you can choose to see the joy. If you try to respond positively to the world, you will spend your time better.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

“I love doing what I do, but I don't like seeing the finished product.”

Pamela Anderson (1967) Canadian-American model, producer, author, former showgirl

TV's new VIP on gettin' naked, bein' a drama queen--and (shhh!) her secret ache, Lee, Luaine, 2006-08-22 http://www.pamelaone.com/interviews/getting%20naked%20%20being%20a%20drama%20queen%20and%20%20her%20secret%20ache%20in%20pamelaone.html,