Art and Literature
44 aphorisms · 14 comments
Aphorisms in This Category
1–20 (44)
tiny.ag/8dgit6e3 · submitted 1997
Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
tiny.ag/i0nu42ok · submitted 1997
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
tiny.ag/2drhezti · submitted 1997
If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.
Anton Chekhov, (advice to a novice playwright), in Art and Literature
tiny.ag/nsr67v4t · submitted 1997
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
tiny.ag/inomue9p · submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll
There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.
Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote", in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance
tiny.ag/wqaxitgv · submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll
Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim", in Art and Literature
tiny.ag/xozwtgoz · submitted 1997
Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance
tiny.ag/qyerpit3 · submitted 1997
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson, in Art and Literature and Work and Recreation
tiny.ag/byzkqtr3 · submitted 1997
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
tiny.ag/4dr826gh · submitted 1997
A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.
tiny.ag/xudcfsey · submitted 1997
In a painting I want to say something comforting.
tiny.ag/bmdpgrs0 · submitted 1997
Let's have some new clichés.
tiny.ag/yuezt1iy · submitted 1997
A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.
tiny.ag/c4btvpfg · submitted 1997
Some editors are failed writers, but then, so are most writers.
tiny.ag/sybjkox1 · submitted 1997
Art is a deliberate recreation of a new and special reality that grows from your response to life. It cannot be copied; it must be created.
tiny.ag/dcgo3bsq · submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll
Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself.
Jorge Luis Borges, (autobiographical essay, 1970), in Art and Literature
tiny.ag/nqpwl3vp · submitted 1997
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
tiny.ag/okkjfcye · submitted 1997
Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
tiny.ag/zlwhlbfu · submitted 1997
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
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