Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody.
I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
The center will not hold if it has been spot-welded by an operator whose deepest concern is not with the weld but with his lottery ticket.
Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
Self-criticism sessions were held, but these produced more criticism than could usefully be absorbed or accomodated.
I don’t think you can talk about progress in art – movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it’s a horizontal line, not a vertical one.
There’s not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.
Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.
Capitalism places every man in competition with his fellows for a share of the available wealth. A few people accumulate big piles, but most do not. The sense of community falls victim to this struggle.
Capitalism arose and took off its pajamas. Another day, another dollar. Each man is valued at what he will bring in the marketplace. Meaning has been drained from work and assigned instead to remuneration.
Can the life of the time be caught in an advertisement? Is that how it is, really, in the meadows of the world?
One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless.
MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever.
It is difficult to keep the public interested. The public demands new wonders piled on new wonders. Often we don’t know where our next marvel is coming from. The supply of strange ideas is not endless.
Some people’, Miss R. said,’run to conceits or wisdom but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word. I might point out that there is enough aesthetic excitement here to satisfy anyone but a damned fool.
Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
The world is sagging, snagging, scaling, spalling, pilling, pinging, pitting, warping, checking, fading, chipping, cracking, yellowing, leaking, stalling, shrinking, and in dynamic unbalance.
I am never needlessly obscure I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
No man’s plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God’s will.