This, which I read in the paper on Saturday…
“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 warps 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.”
Zadie Smith, Fail Better, 2007
… reminded me of this, spotted on the web a few days earlier:
“It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes, 1939
Like those.
Creativity is generally assumed to be additive, at least in the sense of adding to human experience and the sum total of human achievement. It’s interesting to use those ideas to read it as going the other way.