The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn’t – Yahtzee Croshaw

The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn’t – Yahtzee Croshaw

Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. The least of man’s original emanation is better than the best of borrowed thought. – Albert Pinkham Ryder

Imitation is not inspiration, and inspiration only can give birth to a work of art. The least of man’s original emanation is better than the best of borrowed thought. – Albert Pinkham Ryder

Bring something incomprehensible into the world! – Gilles Deleuze

Bring something incomprehensible into the world! – Gilles Deleuze

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling. – Iris Murdoch

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling. – Iris Murdoch

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it. – Chaim Potok

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it. – Chaim Potok

Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible. – Paul Klee

Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible. – Paul Klee

One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it. – Nick Hornby

One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it. – Nick Hornby

Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that’s dynamic and expressivee–that’s what’s good for you if you’re at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. “In the time of your life–live!” That time is short and it doesn’t return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition. – Tennessee Williams

Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that’s dynamic and expressivee–that’s what’s good for you if you’re at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. “In the time of your life–live!” That time is short and it doesn’t return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition. – Tennessee Williams

In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus at a discount and like everything else in a world ruled by the laws of exchange value, literature is required to submit itself to the requirements of the market and must learn, like any other commodity, to adapt and serve needs that lie outside of itself and its concrete value. It is forced to stand not for itself but for an ideological cause of one sort or another, whether it be political, social or literary. It cannot exist for itself: like everything else it has to be justified. And for this very reason the power of storytelling is automatically devalued. Literature is reduced to the status of complimentary utilitarian functions: as a pastime to provide distraction and entertainment, or as a heightened activity that would claim to explore ‘great truths’ about the human condition. – Michael Richardson

In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus at a discount and like everything else in a world ruled by the laws of exchange value, literature is required to submit itself to the requirements of the market and must learn, like any other commodity, to adapt and serve needs that lie outside of itself and its concrete value. It is forced to stand not for itself but for an ideological cause of one sort or another, whether it be political, social or literary. It cannot exist for itself: like everything else it has to be justified. And for this very reason the power of storytelling is automatically devalued. Literature is reduced to the status of complimentary utilitarian functions: as a pastime to provide distraction and entertainment, or as a heightened activity that would claim to explore ‘great truths’ about the human condition. – Michael Richardson

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life? – Aldous Huxley

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life? – Aldous Huxley

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art. – Chaim Potok

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art. – Chaim Potok

A poor original is better than a good imitation. – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A poor original is better than a good imitation. – Ella Wheeler Wilcox