In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship. You become mature when you become the authority of your own life. Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change...
Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the pain, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think li...
Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that’s only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire i...
Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be 'fixed' by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature's fascism is greater than that of any society. There is...
I don't see how it's doing society any good to have it's members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of hating them.
Years later he would say that when he'd decided to become a professional baseball player, it was the only time he'd done something just for the money, and that he'd never do something just for the money ever again. He would never again let the market...
Producing works of art doesn't often count as appropriate intellectual work in an arts department: yet the equivalent in a science department, doing physics or chemistry, does. So why is it that in universities writing about novels is thought to be a...
Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we could find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations. It was an intriguing thought, as it meant that a ...
Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.... Accepting another person's gift is allowing him to...
Walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the same street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attentio...
Begin. . . where you are, NOT where you want to be. Begin stuck in the doldrums of your false story--if that is where you are. Begin there because, in truth, there is no other place to start from. Tell yourself that you are going to listen for the so...
It is hard to think of any work of art of which one can say 'this saved the life of one Jew, one Vietnamese, one Cambodian'. Specific books, perhaps; but as far as one can tell, no paintings or sculptures. The difference between us and the artists of...
I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble. I do know that literature is an art that can foresee the time when it will be silenced, an art that can become inflamed with its ow...
It rains on everyone. It may be storming but there is a covering. Life may be challenging, but there is a covering. It may seem impossible, hopeless, doubtful, fear-ridden, and pain-laden, but there is a covering. There are other umbrellas, but only ...
He(Samuel, known as 'the Pea') was as apprehensive, weak and nervous about things as Swaminathan was. The bond between them was laughter. They were able to see together the same absurdities and incongruities in things. The most trivial and unnoticeab...
Then there was Mani, the Mighty Good-For-Nothing. He towered above all the other boys of the class. He seldom brought any books to the class, and never bothered about homework. He came to the class, monopolized the last bench, ans slept bravely. No t...
I make art for one person and one person only. And as soon as I find that one person, I sure hope he has a lot of wall space, because he’ll be getting a lot of art from me.
Principle 1: By setting limitations, we must choose the essential. So in everything you do, learn to set limitations. Principle 2: By choosing the essential, we create great impact with minimal resources. Always choose the essential to maximize yo...
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest for...
As much as Jefferson loved France residence abroad gave him greater appreciation for his own nation. He was a tireless advocate for things American while abroad, and a promoter of things European while at home. Moving between two worlds, translating ...
Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure...
