A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
“I’d just, averting my gaze from the resettling of poor Ros, caught a glimpse of Alison past the bent back of her husband: she’d also turned away and was now watching the tall police officer, Bob, scrape dried blood off the walls into little pillboxes, and I thought, captured once more by the illusion of patterns: What love shared with theater is the poetry of space…”
Robert Coover | Gerald’s Party