The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The a...rtist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to m...ake a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a word to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game..., then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and delight, the canary that sings on the skull.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing.... ...The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must... somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that "hat," say, was the rea...l and actual name of the thing, but that people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word "ibu," say, to designate not merely the concept hat, but the English word "hat." I knew only one foreign word, "oui," and since it had three letters as did the word for which it was a code, it seemed, touchingly enough, to confirm my theory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar, ...and we can't beat it open. ...The fixed is a world without fire--dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is al...so the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,... is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn't ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »