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Keep The Lamp Burning
…writers have only one duty, as I see it: the duty to express accurately their way of being in the world….
…When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people’s, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment — once you have removed all that warped experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in — what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.
That is what I am looking for when I read a novel: one person’s truth as far as it can be rendered through language.
~ Zadie Smith
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“There will be rebels.
They will live in the shadows. They will be the renegade painters, sculptors, poets, writers, journalists, musicians, actors, dancers, organizers, activists, mystics, intellectuals and other outcasts who are willing to accept personal sacrifice….
They will speak the truth.
The state will have little tolerance of them. They will be poor. The wider society will be conditioned by mass propaganda to write them off as parasites or traitors. They will keep alive what is left of dignity…
