If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, all of us.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Great ideas and stories emerge from cultural needs, not just individual genius.
- In plain terms
- Stories get written because society needs them.
- What can you take from it?
- Creativity often responds to collective demand.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What stories does the world need now?
- Do you write for yourself or others?
Another view
It downplays individual agency and uniqueness.
More from William Faulkner
If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous …
Permalink to quote #38 People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can't know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do-after fo…
Permalink to quote #40 One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for…
Permalink to quote #37
Related quotes
On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are …
V. S PritchettV. S Pritchett quote #13 What life means to me is to put the content of Shelley into the form of Zola. The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of 'art for …
Upton SinclairUpton Sinclair quote #1 Os leitores sao umas putas, amam-nos e depois deixam-nos.
Antonio Lobo AntunesAntonio Lobo Antunes quote #1