Saturday 21 March 2009

Ben Okri on the Role of Writers in Creating Beauty and Documenting Truth

"Writers have one great responsibility: to write beautifully, which is to say to write well. Within this responsibility is that of being truthful. To charm, to amuse, to enchant, to take us out of ourselves, these are all part of beauty. But there is a parallel responsibility: and that is to sing a little about the realitites of the age, to leave some sort of magical record of what they saw and dreamt while they were alive (because they can't really do it the same way when dead), and to bear witness in their unique manner to the beauties, the ordinariness, and the horrors of their times."
From A Way of Being Free, pg. 60

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.