Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

Night quote December 15, 2012

Filed under: Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:33 pm
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There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person — a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Jr. — one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.

(Elie Wiesel in Night p. 120)

 

July 18, 2012

Filed under: Literature — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:24 pm
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“Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain” – Elie Wiesel

I have have read Wiesel’s book Night, which is thin, and yet packs a far more powerful punch than many fat works.  For non-fiction, his quote is clearly true:  what you leave out is as significant as what’s left in.  For fiction, however, when everything has to be put in from the author’s imagination, a whole world must be created.  There is no rock to take away from.  There is only dirt, which must be formed into being, like men formed from clay.

 

 
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