Treat a work of art as though you are a Prince.
Let it speak to you first…Schopenhauer
Read this somewhere, posted by a friend on LinkedIn and found it very interesting : ”Musicians, artists, theatre people are among the strongest and bravest people on the face of the earth. In one year they face daily rejection by people more than what others live in an entire life.
Every day they face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should find a real job, and their own fear of no longer working in the future.
Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they dedicated their lives to is an impossible dream. With every note, opera or performance expose themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and arbitrary judgments.
Every year that passes, many of them look at how their peers achieve the goals of a normal life – the car, the family, the house, the savings. Why?
Because artists are willing to give their entire life to one moment, to that tune, to that sentence, to that agreement or to that interpretation that will touch the soul of the public.
Artists are people who tasted the juice of life at that crystalline moment where they let their creative spirit out and touched someone else’s heart. At that moment they were closer to magic, God and perfection than anyone else could have. And in their hearts, they know that devote to that moment is worth more than a thousand whole lives.”
David Ackert
I resolved to ask her (Anna Akhmatova) : now after so many years of work, when she writes something new, does she have a sense of being armed , of having experience , of a path already trodden?Or is it a step into the unknown , a risk every time ?”
Naked.On naked soil.Every Time” she answered.
After a pause she added : ” A lyric poet follows a terrible path.
A poet has such difficult material : the word …The word is much more difficult material than, for instance, paint.
Think about it, really:For the poet works with the very same words that people use to invite each other to Tea”
Lydia Chukovskaya
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Writers have no real area of expertise.They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.
Lorrie Moore
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Wonderful , how a certain novelist can drape an arm around the reader and sort of whisper into his ear ….. While stepping on his foot.
Arthur Miller
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A good writer refuses to be socialised and Conform.He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness.And by doing so he draws the readers eyes from its usual groove into a new way of seeing.
Bill Barich.
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Technique alone is never enough.You have to have the passion.Technique alone is just an embroidered pot holder.
Raymond Chandler
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Success in writing – Unlike painting-means that your work becomes Cheaper , purchasable by anybody.
Edward Hoagland
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Published work becomes for the writer a second face:people can gaze upon it and say it is ugly or pretty , and you yourself can sometimes look in horror at its imperfections , but it is a face nonetheless and it is yours, and at the end of the day when you bring it home you know you have done your best – know your standards have been met- you can say without shame- Mine !!
Carol Edgarian
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Critics understand very Little.They have to be taught the long hard way.
John Steinbeck
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My books are water.Those of great geniuses is wine.Everybody drinks Water
Mark Twain
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The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he also knows too much making him unfit to speak with detachment
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Listen carefully to the first criticisms of your work.Note just what it is about your work that critics dont like- and then cultivate it.That is the part of your work that is individual and worth cherishing.
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Samuel Johnson
It is advantageous to an artist that his work should be attacked as well as praised.Fame is a shuttlecock.If it be struck at only one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground.To keep it up , it must be struck at both ends.
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Peter Bogdanovich
The only criterion for judging whether a piece of art is successful or not is,TIME
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Carl Sandburg
Dear Mrs Jones : Thank You for your letter.I shall try to do better.(His standard letter used for replying to critical letters)
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Toscanini to his Orchestra
Assassins !
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People who make music together cannot be enemies ,Atleast not while the music lasts.Paul Hindemith
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Singing is near miraculous because it is the mastering of what is otherwise a pure instrument of egotism: the human voice.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
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Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life
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Music….Love looking for words…Lawrence Durell
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Music is essentially Useless .As Life is.George Santayana
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WE talk of art as something artificial in comparison with life. But I sometimes fancy that the very highest art is more real than life itself.At least this is true : that in proportion as passions become real they become poetical; the lover is always trying to be the poet.All real energy is an attempt at harmony and a high swing of rhythm; and if we were only real enough we should all talk in rhyme.
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No work of Art is ever Completed.Only abandoned….Paul Valery
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The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery .Francis Bacon
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Only a born artist can endure the labour of becoming one.Comtesse Diane
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Who is a Master ?
A Master is someone who started before you did.He begins from the center and not the fringe.He teaches the essence. When the essence is perceived, he teaches what is necessary to expand the perception. Whatever he does, he does with the enthusiasm of doing it for the first time. This is the source of his unlimited energy…….
Opening lines of the book “The dancing Wu Li masters “by Gary Zukav
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CRITICS
What one approves , another scorns
And thus his nature each discloses :
You find the rosebush full of thorns ,
I find the thorn bush full of roses.
Arthur Guiterman
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We do not write because we want to;we write because we have to.Somerset Maugham
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Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or a sarcastic thing.
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A GREAT man of letters or any great artist is symbolic without knowing it. The things he describes are types because they are truths. Shakespeare may or may not have ever put it to himself that Richard the Second was a philosophical symbol; but all good criticism must necessarily see him so. It may be a reasonable question whether an artist should be allegorical. There can be no doubt among sane men that a critic should be allegorical.
Introduction to ‘Great Expectations.’
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WE talk of art as something artificial in comparison with life. But I sometimes fancy that the very highest art is more real than life itself. At least this is true : that in proportion as passions become real they become poetical; the lover is always trying to be the poet. All real energy is an attempt at harmony and a high swing of rhythm; and if we were only real enough we should all talk in rhyme.
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When the Boston Symphony played an Avant-garde composition which repeats a single chord endlessly, someone in the balcony shouted “Stop ! I’ll confess !! “
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Military justice is to justice, what military music is to music.Groucho Marx
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Some gems from Oscar Wilde
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Each of the arts has a critic , as it were , assigned to it. The actor is the critic of the drama.
The one characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can put into it whatever one wishes ,and see in it whatever one chooses to see ; and the Beauty ,that gives to creation its universal and aesthetic element ,makes the critic a creator in his turn ,and whispers of a thousand different things which were not present in the mind of him who carved the statue or painted the panel ,or graved the gem(in the critic as an artist)
The fine spirit of choice and delicate instinct of selection by which the artist realizes life for us ,and gives to it a momentary perfection….that spirit of choice ,the subtle tact of omission, is really the critical faculty in one of its most characteristic moods, and one who does not possess this faculty cannot create anything at all in art.(in The critic as an artist)
The first step in aesthetic criticism is to realize one’s own impressions.
(Oscar Wilde in Pen, Pencil and Poison)
Criticism demands infinitely far more cultivation than creation does.(In The critic as an artist)
The moment criticism exercises any influence, it ceases to be criticism .The aim of a true critic is to try to chronicle his own moods ,not to try to correct the masterpieces of others. (In an interview)
Real critics ? Ah ! How perfectly charming they would be !I am always waiting for their arrival.An inaudible school would be nice. (In an interview)
It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it.(in The critic as an artist)
Why should the artist be troubled by the shrill clamour of criticism ?If a mans work is easy to understand an explanation is unnecessary.(In The critic as an artist)
The critic is he who can translate into another manner of a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest , as the lowest ,form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.(The picture of Dorian Gray)
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rasAyana 