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Art Quotes
"Make it new is the message not just of modern art but of modern consumerism, of which modern art is largely a mirror image."
Art,
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"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 own virtue, fall in love with its own decline, and court its own demise."
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"Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing " which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power."
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"And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of IlAovatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide ad beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow from which its beauty chiefly came."
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"Great poets are great copy editors."
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"We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer."
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"Madam de Stael pronounced architecture to be frozen music so is statuary crystalized spirituality."
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"The tune was sad, as the best of Ireland was, melancholy and lovely as a lover's tears."
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"Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less."
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"The painter constructs, the photographer discloses."
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"Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision beginning with one corner of the canvas painting what he thinks should be there not quite pulling it off covering it over with white paint and trying again each time finding out what his painting isn't until he finally finds out what it is. And when you finally do find out what one corner of your vision is you're off and running."
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"Inspiration comes from your writing. Thoughts meander subliminally through our subconscious, at night when we sleep the brain is working. In the act of writing, phrases come out and you think: wow, did I write this? Did I have that insight? Sometimes you know something is good, good within your own limits, and those parts make life worth living."
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"There are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you."
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"The unrecognized genius-that's one old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one-the genius recognized too well?"
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"I left the bankbecause they wouldn't deposit my cheque of poems.So I went to the store,but they didn't acceptmy currency of words.So I boxed all my storiesand took them to charity.But they refused my donation and asked me to give blood instead.I opened the notebooks and made them look, 'What do you think I wrote these in?"
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"Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes."
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"...a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit."
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"Every sword that was dripping the blood became a pen. Every word that was written in it became a poetry."
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"Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography."
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"Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness."
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"Love is always based on self-interest."
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"She, however, attentively watched my looks, and her artist's pride was gratified, no doubt, to read my heartfelt admiration in my eyes."
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"Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself."
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"Do people choose the art that inspires them - do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller."
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"A thing about poetry is, It takes cuts and pain to bleed words. The deeper the wound is, the more you bleed. And eventually, you will start falling in love with it. But the saddest part is, sometimes there comes a moment when you start to feel that all those wounds on your soul are not enough. And you start cutting yourself deeper, forgetting when to stop."
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"Once you have heard the Indian Bamboo flute then everything else is just ordinary!"
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"I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's."
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"Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind."
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"Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore."
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"A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren't quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them."
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"Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see. Thinks what ne'er was nor is nor e'er shall be."
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"Little WordsWhen you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;And I can only stare, and shape my griefIn little words.I cannot conjure loveliness, to drownThe bitter woe that racks my cords apart.The weary pen that sets my sorrow downFeeds at my heart.There is no mercy in the shifting year,No beauty wraps me tenderly about.I turn to little words- so you, my dear,Can spell them out."
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"The public wants work which flatters its illusions."
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"What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves - the music of our being - which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is string and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history."
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"Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father,Your mother, your sister, or your brother?I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.Your friends?Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.Your country?I do not know in what latitude it lies.Beauty?I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.Gold?I hate it as you hate God.Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?I love the clouds the clouds that pass up thereUp there the wonderful clouds!"
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"We should comport ourselves with the masterpieces of art as with exalted personages - stand quietly before them and wait till they speak to us."
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"Art is apotheosis; often, the complaint of beauty."
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