Notebooks Quotes
20 quotes
"I lay too many Eggs in the hot Sands of this Wilderness, the World! with Ostrich Carelessness & Ostrich Oblivion. The greater part, I trust, are trod underfoot, & smashed; but yet no small number crawl forth into Life, some to furnish Feathers for the Caps of others, & still more to plume the Shafts in the Quivers of my Enemies, of them that lie in wait against my Soul."
"Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art."
"I have a notion that a prolonged period of solitude & fasting would produce hallucinations, & that these would be mandalas and such: they would be the essential forms in which "outer" perceptions are organized. (18.23)"
"Give me a place to stand, and I will include the world. (19.333)"
"The total simultaneous pattern always extend from alpha to omega. (21.190)"
"Even the biggest book is fragmentary: to finish anything, you have to cut your losses. Nobody ever writes his dream book. (33.54)"
"The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology. (21.101)"
"One should have bigger & better conversions everyday, like a mechanized phoenix. (21.495)"
"Metaphor is the language of immanence; metonymy of transcendence. (11C.21)"
"Continuous prose suggests complete identification with the representing, observing, immersing-in-object self. Aphorisms suggest a richer & varied personality made up more of internal conflicts and decisions. An epiphanic sequence suggests the highest mystery of personality. (33.47)"
"I think that I probably have a real talent for painting trees if I developed it assiduously. I want to give them great density and depth pile heaps of detail into them and yet keep the sense of presence which is the whole point."
"To paint even a bottle is dramatic. A leaf will do."
"To know what it is to look at things, life as a prayer, a mass, a celebration."
"What trace of the creature subsists in the work. It is a way of staying alone, passing the time subjected to the object — silent, still. Walk with humility in the landscape. To be some natural thing — an ancient tree — no thinking — not to think is central to the activity."
"There is the modern phenomenon of the artist declaring all is void, nothing is possible, and soon is making his fortune out of despair and emptiness. I am too romantic to accept the dishonesty inherent in such a role, or perhaps it is my religious education. Such a position cannot be a religious position. (I) do not accept that the artist should not engage in other activities though when he does he must accept a different responsibility."
"Life is more important than art — quantity is only important in that the amount of activity is greater not the number of works."
"Obey God by living spontaneously."
"How unbearable, for women, is the tenderness which a man can give them without love. For men, how bittersweet this is."
"I left the bankbecause they wouldn’t deposit my cheque of poems.So I went to the store,but they didn’t acceptmy currency of words.So I boxed all my storiesand took them to charity.But they refused my donation and asked me to give blood instead.I opened the notebooks and made them look, 'What do you think I wrote these in?"
"In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture."