Sunday, June 17, 2012

For those who write and read


“A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the window at the children playing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.”
― Orhan Pamuk
(This was posted on the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/OrhanPamukAuthor of the author today. I am merely sharing it here)

3 comments:

Suz said...

thank you for visiting me and for your kind comment about my moon "haiku"
Yes...I agree with what you have written here....the inward journey and discovery is the fuel for words .... always in a story or poem is a bit of the writer made visible...though we must not forget that it is story...added to and molded into universal
very nice

Relyn Lawson said...

This is a marvelous quote. Thank you for sharing it.

Kyra said...

@Suz @Relyn thanks for the read and comments, glad u like it :)