Thursday, May 14, 2015

John Graves, Texas author, on coming to terms with one's origins

[I've found that, as I write and integrate my origins into my story-telling, I move toward releasing myself from the more burdensome constraints of where I've been.]

"If a man couldn't escape what he came from, we would most of us still be peasants in Old World hovels. But, if, having escaped or not, he wants in some way to know himself, define himself, and tries to do it without taking into account the thing he came from, he is writing without any ink in his pen. 

The provincial who cultivates only his roots is in peril, potato-like, of becoming more root than plant. The man who cuts his roots away and denies that they were ever connected with him withers into half a man." 
– John Graves, Goodbye to a River

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