Zitate, Zitate, Zitate (2)

Am gestrigen Sonntag war wieder Lesetag — mehr dazu im vorigen Post dieser Reihe (Opens in a new window) — und wie gewohnt fand ich einige Zitate in Artikeln und Ähnlichem (be)merkenswert.

Zum Beispiel dieses:

“I have come to realise that being a good citizen requires so much more than holding the “correct” views on international events or simply avoiding being “bad”. It’s about going out of your way to be helpful and making a positive contribution to society. It’s making a practical effort to effect change, even if only on a small scale”

Gefunden in “A moment that changed me: my grandpa risks his life to litter pick – and he taught me a profound lesson”, einem Beitrag im Guardian (Opens in a new window).

Gleich zwei Zitate stammen aus einem Artikel über die TV-Serie The Pitt (Opens in a new window):

“In grim times, The Pitt is testament to community and collaboration.”

sowie

“The New Yorker says The Pitt is “a counterintuitive comfort watch”. “There’s definitely comfort in competence – watching a bunch of professionals who know what they’re doing,” says Kay.”

Die Hervorhebung stammt von mir. Ich sehe gerne Serien und lese gerne Bücher über Hauptfiguren, die kompetent sind, also richtig gut in dem, was sie tun, gewöhnlich in ihrem Beruf. Und umgekehrt mag ich keine Geschichten, in denen die Protagonisten herumstümpern.

Deshalb versuche ich selbst auch als Autorin immer noch besser zu werden. Und habe mir diesen Pro-Tipp von Nick Santora gemerkt:

“Nothing is better for a writer than to figure out how to say something just as good, but in fewer words”
aus: Reacher's Showrunner Reveals The Biggest Challenge In The Writers Room (Opens in a new window)

Das Folgende habe ich nicht gelesen, sondern in einem TED-Talk von Amanda Gorman (Opens in a new window) gefunden:

“The decision to create, the artistic choice to have a voice, the choice to be heard is the most political act of all. And by "political" I mean poetry is political in at least three ways: One: what stories we tell, when we're telling them, how we're telling them, if we're telling them, why we're telling them, says so much about the political beliefs we have, about what types of stories matter. Secondly, who gets to have their stories told, I'm talking, who is legally allowed to read, who has the resources to be able to write, who are we reading in our classrooms, says a lot about the political and educational systems, that all these stories and storytellers exist in. Lastly, poetry is political because it's preoccupied with people. If you look at history, notice that tyrants often go after the poets and the creatives first. They burn books, they try to get rid of poetry and the language arts, because they're terrified of them."

sowie

"I really want you to try to hear the ways in which poetry is actually at the center of our most political questions about what it means to be a democracy. Maybe later you're going to be at a protest, and someone's going to have a poster that says, "They buried us, but they didn't know we were seeds."

That's poetry.

You might be in your U.S. History class, and your teacher may play a video of Martin Luther King Jr. saying: "We will be able to hew out of this mountain of despair a stone of hope."

That's poetry.

Or maybe even here, in New York City, you're going to go visit the Statue of Liberty where there's a sonnet that declares, as Americans, "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.""

Hier ist der gesamte TED-Talk:

Normalerweise sammle und poste ich Zitate von Aussagen, mit denen ich übereinstimme. Doch zum Schluss hier einmal etwas, das die Literaturnobelpreisträgerin Olga Tokarczuk geschrieben hat und bei dem ich mir nicht sicher bin, ob ich zustimme. Es ist jedenfalls ein interessanter Gedanke:

“I have always held that writers don’t really have biographies, and that the best way to find out about them is to read their books. The reason why they don’t have biographies is not because nothing interesting ever happens in their lives, or because they’re people of a special kind whose lives take a different route from everybody else’s, but because writing takes up too much of a person’s inner time, and so in many cases there isn’t enough of it left for other activities.”

Geschrieben hat Olga Tokarczuk das hier (Opens in a new window).

PS: Gerade (am Montagabend) habe ich noch dies in Jeanette Wintersons Newsletter vom Sonntag (Opens in a new window) gefunden:

“Money isn’t everything but it helps.

And it helps with an independent life. But you know what? To read that book, to write that book, to sing, to paint, to play, to act, to direct, to make happen, to heal, to give, to open what is closed, to make a difference in this world, every day, because you can, that’s independence. To say what you believe. To believe what you say. Every day.

That’s independence.”

Yup. Und ein Buch zu schreiben, spielerisch zu malen, zu sagen, was ich denke — das alles fühlt sich verdammt gut an :-)