Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. – Jennifer Elisabeth
The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable. – Thomas Henry Huxley
Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others – priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior – hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized “hero of our time” – and of all time. – Henry Miller
and half of learning to play is learning what not to play
and she’s learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say
and she’s trying to sing just enough so that the air around her moves
and make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove
she crawls out on a limb and begins to build her home
and it’s enough just to look around and to know that she’s not alone
up up up up up up up points the spire of the steeple
but god’s work isn’t done by god
it’s done by people – Ani DiFranco
The flow. Yeah. Knowing you could step on the court and make it happen. You practiced, sure. But then, when you walked out there, you could just go. You could flow, that was it: you created and you didn’t totally know how. You just knew you could, so you did. It wasn’t thinking and it wasn’t imitating somebody else’s moves, though you always looked carefully when you watched good players play. But when you played… it was something you couldn’t explain. Neal used to know. It didn’t come from thinking about it. – Doug Wilhelm
One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that’s a chair, that’s a table, and yet at the same time, It’s a miracle, it’s an ecstasy. – Virginia Woolf
He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it. – Jorge Luis Borges
When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies – John Fowles
Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.
(“Literature, Revolution, and Entropy”) – Yevgeny Zamyatin
Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself. – Robert Henri
Don’t make it new; make it whole. – Alex Ross
Art is everywhere you look for it, hail the twinkling stars for they are God’s careless splatters – El Greco
