To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure ...
In art, and maybe just in general, the idea is to be able to be really comfortable with contradictory ideas. In other words, wisdom might be, seem to be, two contradictory ideas both expressed at their highest level and just let to sit in the same ca...
The “music of decline” had sounded, as in that wonderful Chinese fable; like a thrumming bass on the organ its reverberations faded slowly out over decades; its throbbing could be heard in the corruption of the schools, periodicals, and universit...
When experiencing a work of art, a curious exchange takes place; the work projects its aura, and we project our own emotions and precepts on the work. The melancholy in Michelangelo's architecture is fundamentally the viewer's sense of his/her own me...
There was no other way to say it. After being heartbroken for so long, I had made myself completely numb inside. Maybe not from physical pain, but anything emotional, yes. Sexual pleasure? Numb to that, too. I’d have been a great actress. After all...
The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised t...
[after Clark fails at lighting all the exterior Christmas lights at the "lighting ceremony" in front of the entire family] Frances: Talk about pissing your money away. I hope you kids see what a silly waste of resources this was. Audrey: He worked re...
Ferris: Cameron, what have you seen today? Cameron: Nothing good. Ferris: Nothing - wha - what do you mean nothing good? We've seen everything good. We've seen the whole city! We went to a museum, we saw priceless works of art! We ate pancreas!
Roberta: [after showing her weird short film to her art class] That piece is entitled "Mirror, Father, Mirror". I like to show it to people that I'm meeting for the first time because I think it says so much about who I am and what it feels like to i...
Harry: Say, Percy, who's that teacher talking to Professor Quirrell? Percy Weasley: Oh, that's Professor Snape, head of Slytherin House. Harry: What's he teach? Percy Weasley: Potions. But everyone knows it's the Dark Arts he fancies. He's been after...
Barbara Covett: The day we met... it had already begun? Sheba Hart: [pause] Yes. Barbara Covett: Had you had any further relations that day? Sheba Hart: We went to the art room. Barbara Covett: [sarcastically] Well I'm glad I was such an aphrodisiac....
Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He sa...
But, oh, when gloomy doubts prevail, I fear to call thee mine; The springs of comfort seem to fail, And all my hopes decline. Yet, gracious God, where shall I flee? Thou art my only trust; And still my soul would cleave to thee, Though prostrate in t...
Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see…So the fantasy corners of America…you’ve pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books...
Music blows lyrics up very quickly, and suddenly they become more than art. They become pompous and they become self-conscious ... I firmly believe that lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Partic...
Art is a captured emotion. When I say this I mean all artists, whether you are a photographer, a writer, or sculptor, you are trying to capture the way someone or something made you feel. As a story teller I am trying to captivate the audience and al...
The brain is full of lonely ideas, begging you to make some sense of them, to recognize them as interesting. The lazy brain just files them away in old pigeonholes, like a bureaucrat who wants an easy life. The lively brain picks and chooses and crea...
The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or ...
TIME. If you can master the art of dealing with it and make use of it to pray, to love, to care, to heal wounds, to solve problems, to be patience, to find the purpose of life, to wait for something worth waiting for, to chase your dreams, to be kind...
When I got enough confidence, the stage was gone. When I was sure of losing, I won. When I needed people the most, they left me. When I learnt to dry my tears, I found a shoulder to cry on. And when I mastered the art of hating, somebody started lovi...
Now that young girls like my twelve-year-old friend Mai are being exposed to modern Western women like me through crowds of tourists, they're experiencing those first critical moments of cultural hesitation. I call this the "Wait-a-Minute Moment" - t...
