Life is about nouns and verbs. It's about action, about people doing. When you cut out adjectives and adverbs, you cut out the things that qualify action, or interpret or analyze action. You reach the pure essence of experience.
Tracy Chevalier
Oberlin College Commencement, 2013, 2013
Die Geschichte hinter diesem Zitat
In her fourth writing mantra — 'Use adjectives and adverbs as little as possible' — Chevalier made a striking connection between grammar and how we live. She quoted Stephen King's advice to spend adverbs sparingly 'like they were $100 bills,' then applied this to modern life. She observed that we've become a society of commentators on our own lives, constantly posting about what we've done on social media rather than actually experiencing it. She caught a friend tweeting during a theatre performance that she was bored — of course she couldn't get into the play, she was too busy tweeting about it. Her plea to the graduates: 'Put down the device. Take a big breath. Look around at the trees. Just be here. Experience the moment without commenting on it.'
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