Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (1985) ed. Sterling McMurrin
Principles of Social Reconstruction [Originally titled Why Men Fight : A Method Of Abolishing The International Duel], Ch. VIII : What We Can Do, p. 257
1910s
Context: It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. The State and Property are the great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this reason that they are against life, and that they issue in war. Possession means taking or keeping some good thing which another is prevented from enjoying; creation means putting into the world a good thing which otherwise no one would be able to enjoy. Since the material goods of the world must be divided among the population, and since some men are by nature brigands, there must be defensive possession, which will be regulated, in a good community, by some principle of impersonal justice. But all this is only the preface to a good life or good political institutions, in which creation will altogether outweigh possession, and distributive justice will exist as an uninteresting matter of course.
The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession.
“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”
Variant: There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
On how she defines “author” in “Interview with Mystery Author Lucha Corpi” http://latinola.com/story.php?story=8074 in ¡Latino LA! (2009 Dec 4)
Writers on Themselves (1986)
“Promoting reading is a moral responsibility of writers.”
Source: Trujillo, Estrella. Exclusive cultural interview. https://www.peruinforma.com/entrevista-cultural-al-escritor-chileno-jose-baroja/
“If you want to know a country, read its writers.”
