Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.
art identity leaving true insight artist masterpiece artists-life paint
There is a line somewhere in that translates out to, roughly, 'The world is awful.' Yes, I said to myself as I shot across the Bay Bridge not giving a fuck how fast I drove, that sums it up. That is high art: 'The world is awful.' That says it all. This is what we pay composers and painters and the great writers to do: tell us this; from figuring this out, they earn a living. What a masterful, incisive insight. What penetrating intelligence. A rat in a drain ditch could tell you the same thing, were it able to talk. If rats could talk, I'd do anything they said.
intelligence art world living writers insight giving talk great thing shot bridge
But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel.. It's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.
life imagination idea art moment characters author fiction insight special exist ridiculous
Since art is a virtue of the intellect, it demands to communicate with the entire universe of the intellect. Hence it is that the normal climate of art is intelligence and knowledge: its normal soil, the civilized heritage of a consistent and integrated system of beliefs and values; its normal horizon, the infinity of human experience enlighted by the passionate insight of anguish or the intellectual virtues of a contemplative mind.
virtues intelligence infinity mind system art human heritage values experience universe knowledge insight intellect intellectual virtue beliefs contemplative soil normal anguish climate
The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds
life wisdom writing art problem knowledge writers insight critics birds written books
Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.
sorrow insight depth mistake consolation books
The more we have known of the really good things, the more insipid the thin lemonade of later literature becomes, sometimes almost to the point of making us sick. Do you know a work of literature written in the last, say, fifteen years that you think has any lasting quality? I don't. It is partly idle chatter, partly propaganda, partly self-pitying sentimentality, but there is no insight, no ideas, no clarity, no substance and almost always the language is bad and constrained. On this subject I am quite consciously a laudator temporis acti.
quality literature work language good ideas insight clarity bad propaganda sentimentality things sick written books thin
Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.
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Rebellion is all we'll be talking about. Love is revolution, a kind of coup d'état and cultural reprogramming in its own little way.
funny culture revolution kind insight talking rebellion love humour
Strange combination, isn't it--gratitude and resentment? But this is the way I think. Actually, I think everybody thinks that way. Even the children of the humans who died long ago, I think they lived their lives holding similar contradictory thoughts about their parents. They were raised to learn about love and death, and they lived out their lives passing from the sunny spots to the shady spots of this world.
death human-nature humanity children parents world resentment gratitude insight epiphany contradictions parents-and-children
The more one loves, the heavier the meaning of death becomes, and the deeper the sense of loss.
death loss insight epiphany
Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).
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When we're the story, when we're part of it, we can't know the outcome. It's only later that we think we can see what the story was. But do we ever really know? And does anybody else, perhaps, coming along a little later, does anybody else really care?.. History is written by the survivors, but what is that history? That's the point I was trying to make just now. We don't know what the story is when we're in it, and even after we tell it we're not sure. Because the story doesn't end.
life perception history stories humanity storytelling perspective understanding mankind insight hindsight
Our ability to look back on the past, our need or desire to make sense of it, is both a blessing and a curse; and our inability to see into the future with any degree of accuracy is, simultaneously, the thing that saves us and the thing that condemns us.
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The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. (The Medusa)
enlightenment insight terror horror
Partings are the beginnings of new meetings. Beginnings happen because there are endings.
inspirational insight
Sounds travel through space long after their wave patterns have ceased to be detectable by the human ear: some cut right through the ionosphere and barrel on out into the cosmic heartland, while others bounce around, eventually being absorbed into the vibratory fields of earthly barriers, but in neither case does the energy succumb; it goes on forever - which is why we, each of us, should take pains to make sweet notes.
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The erruption of feelings
inspiration death-and-dying buddhism insight
The movie Koyaanisqatsi shows non-commented time-lapse footage and focuses our attention on the very rhythm of our civilized modern life and nature. A marijuana high can do something for a user similar to what this time-lapse footage does. The enhancement of episodic memory and the acceleration of associative streams of memories can alter and enhance our recognition of patterns in our lives in various ways. If we are presented with quick associative chains of past experiences, we can see a pattern in a body of information that is usually not at once presented to our inner eye as such.
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Never give advice unless you have walked the walk, because anybody can talk the talk.
inspiration advice insight food-for-thought
You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.
reading life society individuality morality sensitivity learning insight novels issues self-righteousness
A stumble may prevent a fall.
life learning attitude insight patience
The voice says, maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.
life motivation living life-lessons thought-provoking insight hell
To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.
reading mind attitude insight
Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe.
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