Big Think

Question: What inspires you? Transcript:I think what inspires any individual is probably the last thing that individual can truly spell out. In the case of my U.N. work, what inspired me was a sense that what I was doing would make a difference to real people. And that, I think, in some ways . . . Why that came about, why I needed to be motivated that way, I don’t know. But I did know that I wasn’t just pushing paper, or writing reports, or making speeches. I was changing people’s lives for the better in refugee work, and later in peacekeeping. And that meant a lot to me. In my writing life, the creative part of my life, what inspires me is a need to be heard, I think . . . a need to be able to touch people through my words, and my ideas, and my writing in ways that I can’t always do in person obviously. And . . . and that’s a little more difficult to _________ and breakdown. And George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish playwright, said that, “I write for the same reason the cow gives milk.” And I think it couldn’t be put better than that because, you know, it’s inside you. It’s gotta come out. And rather like a cow is in pain if it’s not milked, a writer, until and unless he writes, feels that internal tension of something in there waiting to be expressed. I don’t know how to . . . how to analyze that process any more than anyone else does. It’s just something natural and instinctive. I’m never one of those who thought that writing could be taught. It was, for me, something that was as natural to me as my breathing, or my walking, or my sitting down to a good meal.

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