Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.
Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom while discouragement often nips it at the bud. Creativity is now something we can turn on and off like a faucet. It is an experience and expression in our lives that must be nurtured. This nurturing process means that creativity is at once a skill, an art, and a life-style.
While it's a fact that a voice begins with natural talent, any talent must be nurtured, cajoled, wrestled with pampered, challenged, and, at every turn, examined.
I would say if a man is going to write on chemistry, he learns chemistry. The same is true of Christianity. But to speak of the craft itself, I would not know how to advise a man how to write. It is a matter of talent and interest. I believe he must be strongly moved if he is to become a writer. Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I for one must get it out.
When you hire a plumber because no hot water is coming out of the kitchen sink faucet, you need to go to the water heater, not the faucet.
While we were promoting 'Wide Open Spaces,' we set aside time to write. We went on several writing retreats where nobody could get hold of us. It was the only way we could take a step back and reflect and write and be living a semi-normal life for a while.
It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.
There are thousands of Eminems. Just listen to a song. There are thousands of them. It's just that he had the talent. It's like someone with a talent to hit a baseball. He had the talent to write lyrics.
For a stalk to grow or a flower to open there must be time that cannot be forced; nine months must go by for the birth of a human child; to write a book or compose music often years must be dedicated to patient research ...To find the mystery there must be patience, interior purification, silence, waiting.
There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.
It must be remembered that the Bush White House has a separate talent for character assassination that must not be confused with a talent for governance.
When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside. It isn't like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there's a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.
Money follows art. Money wants what it can't buy. Class and talent. And remember while there's a talent for making money, it takes real talent to know how to spend it.
Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose.
I write because it is while I'm writing that I feel most connected to why we're here. I write because silence is a heavy weight to carry. I write to remember. I write to heal. I write to let the air in. I write as a practice of listening.
Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page; it writes three hundred.