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b2fb536 Everything you can imagine is real. imagination life inspirational art Pablo Picasso
7845880 A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. inspirational art Leonardo da Vinci
8da37df Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep. sadness love inspirational art redemption Clive Barker
4213b9b We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents. inspirational art Bob Ross
ac31cbd Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write act-of-creation poetry writing inspirational art creativity Rainer Maria Rilke
804057a Art is the proper task of life. life inspirational art Friedrich Nietzsche
a8bdea3 Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple. seasons color art fall autumn J.K. Rowling
1f429fa I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality. dreams inspirational art painting nightmares Frida Kahlo
ecb7372 Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy --the joy of being Salvador Dali-- and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dali going to accomplish today? be-yourself humor inspirational art Salvador Dalí
bdb5fdf I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. nature god inspirational art Frank Lloyd Wright
0b4f36e Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art. theatre inspirational art Constantin Stanislavski
3c25d83 All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you. humour inspirational interpretation art Joss Whedon
ea8e26b An idea is salvation by imagination imagination inspirational art Frank Lloyd Wright
199807c Because when you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it. At least that's how I felt about drawing. samantha generosity art Meg Cabot
f268a52 I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. criticism inspirational art Georgia O'Keefe
c26545e A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity. cod fish photography humor inspirational images art George Bernard Shaw
3158b4a ???????? ??? ??????? ?? ??? ??????. ?????????????????? ???????? ??????? ?????? ???? ????. ???????????? ?????? ???????? ???, ?? ????????? ????? ???. ???????, ?????, ?????, ?????, ?????, ??? ?????????? ??????? ??? ????? ?????? ????. ???????????? ?????? ???????? ?????, ?? ????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ?? ?????? ?? ?????? ???? marathi life inspirational hobbies art Purushottam Laxman Deshpande
3b0f25f Bring something incomprehensible into the world! individuality life inspirational otherness art new Gilles Deleuze
7277f44 You don't have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day. fun humor wisdom inspirational art cool viggo mortensen
771f7fb Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on. dance art exaggeration film Kurt Vonnegut
be6fc40 We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. "I'm this way because my father made me this way. I'm this way because my husband made me this way." Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible. democrat sex criticism responsibility america inspirational republican victim liberal libertarian art culture trauma Camille Paglia
18a0cb3 In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write? destiny inspirational art on-writing Rainer Maria Rilke
2852ee8 It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us. sadness art Alain de Botton
9a0ea41 Blessed are the weird people poets writing-life creative inspirational art writers Jacob Nordby
b7be625 I shut my eyes in order to see. creative inspirational art Paul Gauguin
5f5f1f4 It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. writing clarity art communication Robert A. Heinlein
4d03326 The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible. art Leo Tolstoy
13d0dbe I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation. musician world poetry humanity music songs life truth inspirational lyrics songwriting art connection song-lyrics artist Criss Jami
9415cca If you don't want a generation of robots, fund the arts! inspirational robots art Cath Crowley
7f7afb0 Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else. creating wallpaper marcel-proust art flowers Albert Camus
a5378e1 Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense. books art Yann Martel
f3f9f3a "It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?" "Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out." artists indignation art Irving Stone
761db6d "The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt." writing complexity art Joyce Carol Oates
60159ce We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless. uselessness utility art Oscar Wilde
a35d265 What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants. metaphor irony idealism confidence avant-garde ebullience meta-modernism shia-lebouf david-foster-wallace post-ironic art culture postmodernism Robert Hughes
3ce7bb8 . . . it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch. immortality art Donna Tartt
71c60e3 The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination criticism imagination genius-stupidity nerdery critics art genius nerds nerd artist Nassim Nicholas Taleb
077f9a2 The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work. writing inspiration art Steven Pressfield
b4204fd Story is the umbilical cord that connects us to the past, present, and future. Family. Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. . . . Story is an affirmation of our ties to one another. story art connection Terry Tempest Williams
8a0ae11 "A writer or any artist can't expect to be embraced by the people. I've done records where it seemed like no one listened to them. You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read. And you just keep doing your work because you have to, because it's your calling. But it's beautiful to be embraced by the people. Some people have said to me, "Well, don't you think that kind of success spoils one as an artist? If you're a punk rocker, you don't want to have a hit record..." And I say to them, "Fuck you!" writing art creativity Patti Smith
7b914bb We don't value craftsmanship anymore! All we value is ruthless efficiency, and I say we deny our own humanity that way! Without appreciation for grace and beauty, there's no pleasure in creating things and no pleasure in having them! Our lives are made drearier, rather than richer! How can a person take pride in his work when skill and care are considered luxuries! We're not machines! We have a human need for craftsmanship! creating human beauty care handmade quantity craftsmanship efficiency grace art skill quality value machines pleasure Bill Watterson
0f336d7 Our sadness won't be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain. sadness happiness life art melancholy Alain de Botton
1b4e3ec Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators artists arts criticism academics critics art-history art creativity Nassim Nicholas Taleb
5ab42bf "Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn't look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me--little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again. lovely madness lovers new-day gratitude drinking joy inspiration sadness music songs happiness hope be-okay fine panic-attacks park starving panic-attack chest sound ed okay self-destruction wellness grateful hopeful anxiety alcohol coffee spring well-being art singing hurt balance sky flowers crying focus panic sing tears walking hopeless recovery sad self-harm smoking mental-health Charlotte Eriksson
faddddd Most striking about the traditional societies of the Congo was their remarkable artwork: baskets, mats, pottery, copper and ironwork, and, above all, woodcarving. It would be two decades before Europeans really noticed this art. Its discovery then had a strong influence on Braque, Matisse, and Picasso -- who subsequently kept African art objects in his studio until his death. Cubism was new only for Europeans, for it was partly inspired by specific pieces of African art, some of them from the Pende and Songye peoples, who live in the basin of the Kasai River, one of the Congo's major tributaries. It was easy to see the distinctive brilliance that so entranced Picasso and his colleagues at their first encounter with this art at an exhibit in Paris in 1907. In these central African sculptures some body parts are exaggerated, some shrunken; eyes project, cheeks sink, mouths disappear, torsos become elongated; eye sockets expand to cover almost the entire face; the human face and figure are broken apart and formed again in new ways and proportions that had previously lain beyond sight of traditional European realism. The art sprang from cultures that had, among other things, a looser sense than Islam or Christianity of the boundaries between our world and the next, as well as those between the world of humans and the world of beasts. Among the Bolia people of the Congo, for example, a king was chosen by a council of elders; by ancestors, who appeared to him in a dream; and finally by wild animals, who signaled their assent by roaring during a night when the royal candidate was left at a particular spot in the rain forest. Perhaps it was the fluidity of these boundaries that granted central Africa's artists a freedom those in Europe had not yet discovered. congo art europe Adam Hochschild
064e8e5 We don't need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are riches, more humane, and much more joyful. individuality life museums art Orhan Pamuk
462f9cd Fascism is fundamentally and at bottom an aesthetic conception, and . . . it is your function as creators of beautiful things to portray with the greatest efficacy the sublime beauty and inevitable reality of the Fascist ideal. beauty art fascism Louis de Bernières
bf49641 You love because you want to need someone the way you did when you were a child, and have them need you too. You eat well because the intensity of taste reminds you of a need satisfied, a pain relieved. The finest paintings are nothing more than the red head of a flower, nodding in the breeze, when you were two years old; the most exciting film is just the way everything was, back in the days when you stared goggle-eyed at the whirling chaos all around you. All these things do is get the adult to shut up for a while, to open for just a moment a tiny sliding window in the cell deep inside, letting the pallid child peep hungrily out and drink the world in before darkness falls again. love art childhood Michael Marshall Smith
58e0a9c [L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world. understanding criticism poems humor life paintings self-understanding plays films gravity art novels vanity desire Alain de Botton
12e277f Edward genially enough did not agree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the to point out that his life--the life of the mind, the life of the book collector and music lover and indeed of the gallery-goer, appreciator of the feminine and occasional --would become simply unlivable and unthinkable in an Islamic republic. Again, he could accede politely to my point but carry on somehow as if nothing had been conceded. I came slowly to realize that with Edward, too, I was keeping two sets of books. We agreed on things like the first Palestinian , another event that took the Western press completely off guard, and we collaborated on a book of essays that asserted and defended Palestinian rights. This was in the now hard-to-remember time when all official recognition was withheld from the PLO. Together we debated Professor Bernard Lewis and Leon Wieseltier at a once-celebrated conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Cambridge in 1986, tossing and goring them somewhat in a duel over academic 'objectivity' in the wider discipline. But even then I was indistinctly aware that Edward didn't feel himself quite at liberty to say certain things, while at the same time feeling rather too much obliged to say certain other things. A low point was an almost uncritical profile of Yasser Arafat that he contributed to magazine in the late 1980s. feminism books music 1986 ad-hominem bernard-lewis first-intifada interview-magazine intifada islamic-republic leon-wieseltier middle-eastern-studies intellectualism theocracy cambridge arafat israeli-palestinian-conflict middle-east debate edward-said art palestine palestinians Christopher Hitchens
860eb35 The figure in the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, or what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus. But, the orthodox painter feels, Jesus of Nazareth did not walk around Galilee faceless. The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some *quality* of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we can be given a new glimpse of the love of God. jesus love iconography icons art painting Madeleine L'Engle
44fef85 When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. destiny art consumerism soul creativity Steven Pressfield
4854038 Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is--a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)--a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book. reading art reader Vladimir Nabokov
cd15dac Film photography will always be superior to digital - because no matter how many lasers and instant buttons and HD pixels you've got, a human being can take a photograph with much more integrity and meaning than one a built-in robot took. photography history magic nature human future compassion cellulod hd kodak instant robot camera photo digital art film nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
b4082fe "What else can you tell me?" Dad stares at me. "What have you learned while you were awake?" I learned that life is so, so fragile. I learned that you can know someone for just days and never forget the impression he left on you. I learned that art can be beautiful and sad at the same time. I learned that if someone loves you, he'll wait for you to love him back. I learned that how much you want something doesn't determine whether you get it or not, that "no" might not be enough, that life isn't fair, that my parents can't save me, that maybe no one can. "Nothing much," I mutter." time life colonel-martin shades-of-earth unfair nothing dad fragile chaos art save hard mess sad Beth Revis
98e7997 "- Vidite, umetnik, to je "sumnjivoo lice", maskiran covek u sumraku, putnik sa laznim pasosem. Lice pod maskom je divno, njegov rang je mnogo visi nego sto u pasosu pise, ali sta to mari? Ljudi ne vole tu neizvesnost ni tu zakukuljenost, i zato ga zovu sumnjivim i dvolicnim. A sumnja, kad se jednom rodi, ne poznaje granica. Sve i kad bi umetnik mogao nekako da objavi svetu svoju pravu licnost i svoje pozvanje, ko bi mu verovao da je to njegova poslednja rec? I kad bi pokazao svoj pravi pasos, ko bi verovao da nema u dzepu sakriven neki treci? I kad bi skinuo masku u zelji da se iskreno nasmeje i pravo pogleda, bilo bi jos uvek ljudi koji bi ga molili da bude potpuno iskren i poverljiv i da zbaci i tu poslednju masku koja toliko lici na ljudsko bice. Umetnikova sudbina je da u zivotu pada iz jedne neiskrenosti u drugu i da vezuje protivrecnost za protivrecnost. I oni mirni i srecni kod kojih se to najmanje vidi i oseca, i oni se u sebi stalno kolebaju i sastavljaju bez prestanka dva kraja koja se nikad sastaviti ne daju." art Ivo Andrić
a431018 I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly deserted rooms, abandoned houses and discarded photographs of women. Gradually, her work became more abstract, and in her last exhibition, her paintings were splashes of rebellious color, like the two in my living room, dark patches with little droplets of blue. I asked about her progress from modern realism to abstraction. Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams. reality dreams art Azar Nafisi
1e9589b "Airplane Dream #13' told the story, more or less, of a dream Rosa had had about the end of the world. There were no human beings left but her, and she had found herself flying in a pink seaplane to an island inhabited by sentient lemurs. There seemed to be a lot more to it -- there was a kind of graphic "sound track" constructed around images relating to Peter Tchaikovsky and his works, and of course abundant food imagery -- but this was, as far as Joe could tell, the gist. The story was told entirely through collage, with pictures clipped from magazines and books. There were pictures from anatomy texts, an exploded musculature of the human leg, a pictorial explanation of peristalsis. She had found an old history of India, and many of the lemurs of her dream-apocalypse had the heads and calm, horizontal gazes of Hindu princes and goddesses. A seafood cookbook, rich with color photographs of boiled crustacea and poached whole fish with jellied stares, had been throughly mined. Sometimes she inscribed text across the pictures, none of which made a good deal of sense to him; a few pages consisted almost entirely of her brambly writing, illuminated, as it were, with collage. There were some penciled-in cartoonish marginalia like the creatures found loitering at the edges of pages in medieval books." art Michael Chabon
54a3539 In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the 's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it was a memorable experience. Our lost leaders, -- , , Theodore Parker, -- who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people. . The wonderful power which Washington's Attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed to of insinuating his ideas equally into learned and unlearned had passed from 's pen to 's tongue. . { } laughter sympathy emotion poetry morality reason imagination friendship humor love truth wisdom inspirational lecture henry-d-thoreau henry-thoreau mirth orator pathos ralph-e-emerson ralph-emerson ralph-waldo-emerson some-mistakes-of-moses henry-david-thoreau ingersoll robert-g-ingersoll robert-green-ingersoll robert-ingersoll emerson memorable praise boston art thoreau simplicity paine thomas-paine tears respect logic honor power speech voice Moncure Daniel Conway
aee6a11 No peace is possible between the novelist and the agelaste [those who do not laugh]. Never having heard God's laughter, the agelastes are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men necessarily think the same thing, and that they themselves are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual. The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin. laughter truth uniformity essay individual art uncertainty novel Milan Kundera
27d1aab "Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, "It is the trade entering his body." The art must enter the body, too." literature reading writer writing the-writing-life art writing-advice write artistry read discipline reader artist Annie Dillard
f285331 Energy manipulation took place completely in mind,same way believing in telepathy caused telepathic abilities to grow STRONGER. literature fiction poetry imagination inspirational chakras christina-westover energy-manipulation telepathist telepathy san-francisco art jack-kerouac Christina Westover
c39bf98 Art flouts convention. Convention became convention because it works. convention art Stewart Brand
9e0bfac Heade's calm is unsteady, storm-stirred; we respond in our era to its hint of the nervous and the fearful. His weather is interior weather, in a sense, and he perhaps was, if far from the first to portray a modern mood, an ambivalent mood tinged with dread and yet imbued with a certain lightness.The mood could even be said to be religious: not an aggressive preachment of God's grandeur but a kind of Zen poise and acceptance, represented by the small sedentary or plodding foreground figures that appear uncannily at peace as the clouds blacken and the lightning flashes. martin-johnson-heade art John Updike
7dedcc3 I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or from a boat in the bay or on the river, and you will see in any section of the view far better paintings than in this lentil soup that you people have to pedigree in order to love. I may be a thief, but I know color when I see it in the flash of heaven or in the Devil's opposing tricks, and I know mud. Mr. Knoedler, you needn't worry about your paintings anymore. I'm not going to steal them. I don't like them. Sincerely yours, P. Soames color paintings art Mark Helprin
12b4992 Nevertheless, we react to one a bit differently than we do to Rothko's hovering panels or Barnett Newman's stripes, though Whistler does approach their extremity of abstraction; part of our pleasure lies in recognizing bridges and buildings in the mist, and in sensing the damp riverine silence, the glimmering metropolitan presence. ... The painting - a single blurred stripe of urban shore - is additionally daring in that the sky and sea are no shade of blue, but, instead, an improbable, pervasive cobalt green. Human vision is here taken to its limits, and modern painting, as a set of sensations realized in paint, is achieved. james-mcneill-whistler art John Updike
58f7fd2 We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot. ecstasy art forgotten G.K. Chesterton
dc53411 He died at forty-two. I was there to collect his talent. I was there at the hospital deathbed of my beloved Billie Holiday, just forty-four, her liver destroyed by drinking; I was there inside the hotel room of Charlie Parker, my singular jazz saxophonist, who died in his midthirties, but whose body was so ravaged by drugs the coroners thought he was sixty. Tommy Dorsey, the bandleader, choked in his sleep when he was fifty-one, too deep in pills to awaken. Johnny Allen Hendrix (you called him Jimi) swallowed a handful of barbiturates and expired. He was twenty-seven. It is not new, this idea that a purer art awaits you in a substance. But it is naive. I existed before the first grapes were fermented. Before the first whiskey was distilled. Be it opium or absinthe, marijuana or heroin, cocaine or ecstasy or whatever will follow, you may alter your state, but you will not alter this truth: I am Music. I am here inside you. Why would I hide behind a powder or a vapor? Do you think me so petty? music alcohol art talent drugs Mitch Albom
805d5c9 There are those who maintain that you can't demand anything of the reader. They say the reader knows nothing about art, and that if you are going to reach him, you have to be humble enough to descend to his level. This supposes either that the aim of art is to teach, which it is not, or that to create anything which is simply a good-in-itself is a waste of time. Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. We hear a great deal about humility being required to lower oneself, but it requires an equal humility and a real love of the truth to raise oneself and by hard labor to acquire higher standards. criticism beauty truth disicipline appreciation art Flannery O'Connor
39be2a2 And if I am not mistaken here is the secret of the greatness that was Spain. In Spain it is men that are the poems, the pictures and the buildings. Men are its philosophies. They lived, these Spaniards of the Golden Age; they felt and did; they did not think. Life was what they sought and found, life in its turmoil, its fervour and its variety. Passion was the seed that brought them forth and passion was the flower they bore. But passion alone cannot give rise to a great art. In the arts the Spaniards invented nothing. They did little in any of those they practised, but give a local colour to a virtuosity they borrowed from abroad. Their literature, as I have ventured to remark, was not of the highest rank; they were taught to paint by foreign masters, but, inapt pupils, gave birth to one painter only of the very first class; they owed their architecture to the Moors, the French and the Italians, and the works themselves produced were best when they departed least from their patterns. Their preeminence was great, but it lay in another direction: it was a preeminence of character. In this I think they have been surpassed by none and equalled only by the ancient Romans. It looks as though all the energy, all the originality, of this vigorous race had been disposed to one end and one end only, the creation of man. It is not in art that they excelled, they excelled in what is greater than art--in man. But it is thought that has the last word. literature character creation-of-man spaniards the-golden-age the-last-word art thought W. Somerset Maugham
74e684b The river, tonally, does not recede, presenting the same lifeless grey near and far, a depthless plane upon which Schmitt's dragging oars inscribe parallel lines and Eakins' oars, rising and falling, leave methodically spaced patches of disturbed water. The canvas is haunting - en evocation of the democracy's idyllic, isolating spaciousness, present even in the midst of a great Eastern city. thomas-eakins art John Updike
f4530a7 "Sulkowicz's genius was to make her burden tangible, and in so doing make it something others could share. Solidarity has been a big part of this feminist movement against violence. ("An Insurrectionary Year")" rape feminism art Rebecca Solnit
d1cf6e8 Give yourself to these great works of art. They suffice for a lifetime. enduring great-works-of-art works-of-art the-black-prince iris-murdoch lifetime art Iris Murdoch
fb23b63 "This river is famed in atrocious song and verse; the most prevalent motif is one which attempts to make of the river an ersatz father figure. Actually, the Mississippi River is a treacherous and sinister body of water whose eddies and currents yearly claim many lives. I have never known anyone who would even venture to stick his toe in its polluted waters, which seethe with sewage, industrial waste, and deadly insecticides. Even the fish are dying. Therefore, the Mississippi as Father-God-Moses-Daddy-Phallus-Pops is an altogether false motif began, I would imagine, by that dreary fraud, Mark Twain. This failure to make contact with reality is, however, characteristic of almost all of America's "art." Any connection between American art and American nature is purely coincidental, but this is only because the nation as a whole has no contact with reality. That is only one of the reasons why I have always been forced to exist on the fringes of its society, consigned to the Limbo reserved for this who do know reality when they see it." reality the-mississippi mark-twain art John Kennedy Toole
68afd37 ...those works that don't touch the heart, it seems to me, miss the true aim of Art. art Gustav Flaubert
2e5c6d6 It's better to have a hunger and appreciation for beauty than to be merely beautiful. In the end, life is richer that way. She may learn that. beauty art Susan Vreeland
453a1e0 "Rome took all the vanity out of me, for after seeing the wonders there, I felt too insignificant to live, and gave up all my foolish hopes in despair." "Why should you, with so much energy and talent?" "That's just why, because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a common-place dauber, so I don't intend to try anymore." 19th-century-literature american-literature amy-march louisa-may-alcott quotes-about-art little-women classic-literature art rome Louisa May Alcott
8235210 "I think we ought to find something else to do," said Mandy. "But Alecto my love, you're the first person to notice my retro diner kitchen. When my parents saw it, they thought I was creating a weird art project." "I like it. It's got that let's-drown-ourselves-in-better-days type ambiance," Alecto declared, his gray eyes narrowed." funny friendship love ambience better-days fifties retro cape-breton nova-scotia diner drowning pollution art parents kitchen nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
0a38aaf correlation between the growing lack of respect for ideas and the imagination and the increasing gap between rich and poor in America, reflected not just in the gulf between the salaries of CEOs and their employees but also in the high cost of education, the incredible divide between private and public schools that makes all of the fine speeches by our policy makers-- most of whom send their children to private schools anyway, just as they enjoy the benefits and perks of their jobs as servants of the people-- all the more insidious and insincere. reading imagination education art culture Azar Nafisi
efb4de1 Twenty years earlier, in a life [Kirsten] mostly couldn't remember, she had had a small nonspeaking role in a short-lived Toronto production of King Lear. Now she walked in sandals whose soles had been cut from an automobile tire, three knives in her belt. shakespeare life post-apocalyptic dystopia art play drama Emily St. John Mandel
5a635d1 ...the line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn't matter if it's been through the Xerox machine a hundred times. beauty xerox art Donna Tartt
5dbfb39 And when all else is gone, Art remains. art-remains kate-atkinson art Kate Atkinson
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