His Writing
The Faroese capital Tórshavn is always the centre of Heinesen's writing. He is famous for having once called Tórshavn "The Navel of the World". His writing focuses on contrasts between darkness and light, between destruction and creativity. Then following is the existential struggle of man to take sides. This is not always easy, however, and the lines between good and bad are not always clearly defined. Furthermore, Heinesen was captivated by the mysterious part of life. He called himself religious in the broadest sense of the word. His life could be described as a struggle against defeatism. One oft-quoted aphorism of his is that "life is not despair, and death shall not rule".
Read more about this topic: William Heinesen
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“Hidden away amongst Aschenbach’s writing was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work.”
—Thomas Mann (18751955)
“Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)