All MARGARET ATWOOD Quotes about “Art”

“As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.”
“When faced with the inevitable, you always have a choice.... As I learned during my liberal arts education, any symbol can have, in the imaginative context, two versions, a positive and a negative. If you spill your milk, you're left with a glass which is either half empty or half full.... You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.”
“Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.”
“The male frog in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogsâ€”it's been documentedâ€”discover if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier and the small frog appears much larger than it really is." So?" So that's what art is for the artist, an empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.”
“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaningâ€”human meaning, that isâ€”is defined by them. You have to admit that.”
“The cemetery has ... an inscription: 'Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing.”
“So thatâ€™s what art is, for the artist,â€ said Crake. â€œAn empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.”
“As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist. I don't mean there's never any overlap. You learn things in one area and bring them into another area. But giving a speech against racism is not the same as writing a novel. The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.”
“The heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.”
“There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.”
“art happens. It happens when you have the craft and the vocation and are waiting for something else, something extra, or maybe not waiting; in any case it happens. It's the extra rabbit coming out of the hat, the one you didn't put there.”
“The characters [of The Tempest] have always been favorites of mine. It is one of his meditations on art - what it does.”

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