Quotes for the day

Arundhati Roy: As a writer, a fiction writer, I have often wondered whether the attempt to always be precise, to try and get it all factually right somehow reduces the epic scale of what is really going on. Does it eventually mask a larger truth? I worry that I am allowing myself to be railroaded into offering prosaic, factual precision when maybe what we need is a feral howl, or the transformative power and real precision of poetry. (In 'What Have We Done to Democracy?')

Whishaw said that when he agreed to take the role, [director Jane] Campion told him that he should know as much about how poets approach their craft as possible... "She said 'You have to experience the world as poetry to have a poet's view of life. You can see poetry in everything, and poetry only reveals itself over time.'

"I visited his house and did everything I could to get myself closer to being in his spirit. I spent some time in class with a poet and we touched on some of the technical things. But Keats said, 'Poetry should come as naturally as leaves to a tree.' He was a smart man and educated himself to the technical stuff, but when he was writing, he was receiving it from somewhere else." ('Ben Whishaw channels poetic John Keats in Bright Star')