"All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side"
About this Quote
Young’s sentence refuses the comfort of a single, bossy world-view, then dares you to keep moving anyway. The first move is philosophical but also literary: “no single reality” is an ars poetica for the kind of writing that multiplies perspectives, lets contradictions stand, and treats truth as something refracted through temperament, class, desire, memory. She’s not just describing relativism; she’s defending a method. If reality isn’t singular, the novelist’s job isn’t to deliver a verdict. It’s to stage the collision of competing versions and let the reader feel how each one makes its bid for authority.
Then comes the sly turn: the “beauty” is persistence in the face of that instability. Utopia “may not exist,” the bridge “might end,” and yet the motion continues. The metaphor is doing quiet emotional labor. It recasts writing (and living) as an act of faith without guarantees: you commit to an imagined destination while knowing the infrastructure could vanish. That’s not naïve optimism; it’s disciplined, almost stubborn hope, the kind that survives because it expects disappointment.
Context matters. Young came of age alongside modernism’s shattered certainties and wrote in a century that repeatedly proved how fragile “reality” becomes under propaganda, war, and social upheaval. Her line reads like a response to that historical whiplash: if the world won’t stabilize into one story, the ethical choice is not cynicism but forward movement - making art, building visions, taking steps - even on a provisional bridge.
Then comes the sly turn: the “beauty” is persistence in the face of that instability. Utopia “may not exist,” the bridge “might end,” and yet the motion continues. The metaphor is doing quiet emotional labor. It recasts writing (and living) as an act of faith without guarantees: you commit to an imagined destination while knowing the infrastructure could vanish. That’s not naïve optimism; it’s disciplined, almost stubborn hope, the kind that survives because it expects disappointment.
Context matters. Young came of age alongside modernism’s shattered certainties and wrote in a century that repeatedly proved how fragile “reality” becomes under propaganda, war, and social upheaval. Her line reads like a response to that historical whiplash: if the world won’t stabilize into one story, the ethical choice is not cynicism but forward movement - making art, building visions, taking steps - even on a provisional bridge.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Marguerite
Add to List
