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Favourite Quotes
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G.K. Chesterton
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"Art is limitation; the essence of every
picture is the frame"
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"I'd say that every close friend of mine, regardless of how good they play or how mentally healthy they are, somewhere deep down inside, they feel they are just a fraud waiting to be discovered."
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The following quote addresses the "temptation to please", the desire to jump through everyone's' hoops. This can only lead to a dishonest effort, which will be sensed by an audience. Also, what will please one, will offend another. So the first order of business should be, please yourself: |
| from "The Burning Library: Essays" by Edmund White, ed. David Bergman (Vintage) |
"Part of my problem as a young writer was that I was too much a New Yorker, always second guessing the "market". I became so discouraged that I decided to write something that would please me alone, that became my sole criterion. And that was when I wrote Forgetting Elena, the first novel I got published. In my courses later I always forbade my writing students to discuss in class the commercial side of publishing. I wanted to save them the time I lost; I wanted them to be serious artists free of all constraints. I believe it was Shiller who said that
the only time a human being is free is when he or she makes a work of art; if that is true then art is sacred and shouldn't be compromised by mere ambition."
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