A Saying to Inspire Writers

The current issue of The Paris Review has an interview with French novelist Michel Houellebecq conducted by Susannah Hunnewell, in which Houellebecq says things both interesting, comical, absurd, provocative and interesting (and some that seem plain wrong). You can read the interview in its entirety here:

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Anyhow in the course of the interview Houellebecq restates a saying of St. Paul in a way that I found catchy:

HOUELLEBECQ

“Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” For me the sentence would be “Now abideth beauty, truth, and intensity; but the greatest of these is intensity.”

I think this is as good a recommendation for every writer sitting at his desk as any — in off hours perhaps we may indulge in Baudlerian “luxe, calme et volupte” but on the page “beauty, truth and intensity — with intensity being the greatest of these” seems like a dictum worth copying onto an index card and pinning up. As I have just done/

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