orwell, for peter
Peter! You probably won't check my livejournal because you won't expect me to update it. But the other day, during our conversation on what drives the creative urge (arrogance? honesty? self-loathing?), I forgot this Orwell quote I encountered and recorded. So here it is!
"All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention."
Am I going to start writing again? Maybe. But I probably won't stop being so annoyingly self-absorbed.
"All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention."
Am I going to start writing again? Maybe. But I probably won't stop being so annoyingly self-absorbed.