Art & Creativity Quote by Richard Price

Richard Price is weighing the odd authority he carries into a classroom as a successful novelist and screenwriter. Book-and-movie-land is a world of credits, agents, meetings, and premieres, a place students often romanticize as the destination for their ambitions. By imagining himself descending on angel wings, he mocks the aura that precedes him, the halo effect that institutions sometimes leverage when they bring practitioners in as visiting stars. The image flatters and indicts at once: he recognizes how easily a teacher can be cast as a savior, bestowing sacred industry wisdom, yet he feels the absurdity and distance built into that role.

Embedded in the line is a concern about relationships rather than credentials. An angel appears briefly, dazzles, and leaves; a teacher should not. If he is a figure who parachutes in, the dynamic becomes performative, with students as spectators, measuring themselves against a myth rather than learning a craft. Price, whose fiction and screen work are grounded in meticulous observation and demystifying detail, values the slow, unglamorous work of making stories. The classroom is less a stage than a workshop, less revelation than revision, and he is wary of any pedestal that separates him from the give-and-take that real teaching requires.

There is also an ethical note. Students may hope his presence will grant access, shortcuts, or a blessing from the industry. He seems to urge a shift away from that transaction toward a more mutual engagement: listening to what students are writing, honoring their worlds rather than importing his, and turning down the volume on celebrity so the craft can be heard. The line becomes a self-check against vanity and spectacle. If he sheds the wings and lands as a working writer, the classroom can become the place where myth dissolves into process, and authority becomes a shared commitment to the messy, necessary labor of making art.