Quotes
Though I had never had any assignments from a college professor, I had made much harder and more prolonged attempts at self-expression than any of them. Swearing love for art, they hovered on the edge of Bohemian life. Always friendly, they could never be anybody’s friend; always reading, they could really never learn; always boasting of their passions, they could never really feel and were afraid to live.
What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?
He said; and feeds his hungry heart
With shapes of unsubstantial art.
I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!
What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?
Practice and thought might gradually forge many an art.
Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.
People say, “Artist, study nature!” But it is no small matter to develop what is noble out of what is common, beauty out of what lacks form.
Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.
When computers learn how to make jokes, artists will be in serious trouble.
p. 22
We are all engaged in looting the past. (Only the greatest geniuses manage to steal from the future.)
p. 168
...there is a realm of possible knowledge which can be reached by artists, which is not susceptible of mathematical verification but which is true. This is sometimes spoken as the ineffable. If there is any word I detest in the language, this would be it, but the fact that it exists, the word ineffable, is suspicious in that it suggests that there might be something that is ineffable. And I believe that that’s the place artists are trying to get to, and I further believe that when they are successful, they reach it...
p. 65
