All Quotes By Tag: Art

“If I knew what to doI’d do more than write a song for you”

“It is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form.”

“I believe the visionaries and true reflections of society will be rewarded after their lives. Those being rewarded now are giving the public what it needs now, usually applauding its current state and clearing consciences.”

“Music resembles poetry, in eachAre nameless graces which no methods teach,And which a master hand alone can reach.”

“If seeing her an hour before her lastWeak cough into all blackness I could yetBe held by chalk-white walls- The Consumptive. Belsen 1945”

“Dying Speech of an Old PhilosopherI strove with none, for none was worth my strife.Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;It sinks; and I am ready to depart.”

“Don’t patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he’s stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.”

“In the moment before I crossed over, I knew that the priests and magicians of Egypt were fools and charlatans for promising to prolong the beauties of life beyond the world we are give. Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. All of life’s pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.”

“Time and death: It’s the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It’s just what’s there. It was not something I planned to do.”

“I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he’s in business: Beethoven’s deafness, Goya’s deafness, Milton’s blindness, that kind of thing.”

“Qui cache son fou, meurt sans voix”

“The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don’t own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? ‘Your very own words,’ indeed! And who are you?”

“I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you’re an artist, by children if you’re not.”

“Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.”

“There are only two things worse then an empty canvas: death and taxes.”