"Well, life isn't a cakewalk, is it?! Eighty-nine percent of the world's most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think VelÃ¡squez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries of central heating and twenty-four-hour pizza delivery?!"

--

Source : Marisha Pessl (2013). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.432, Penguin UK

Marisha Pessl

#Art Quotes #Men Quotes #Thinking Quotes

“Christmas in L.A. is weird. There's no snow. It's not even cold.”
“In the long term everyone traffics in foregone conclusions, and in the short term they just get drunk. This is the way it has always been. Some half-assed ambiguity masquerading as mystery is all anybody's really looking for.”
“Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and I am sure...we both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves.”
“The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge.”

Source : Thomas Love Peacock, Herbert Francis Brett Brett-Smith (1921). “Four Ages of Poetry: Shelley's Defence of Poetry. Browning's Essay on Shelley. Edited by H.F.B. Brett-Smith”
“Today, Lan Lan is one of my favourite classical pianists.... Years ago I had a great admiration for Arthur Rubinstein but I have no doubt that Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin were also fantastic piano players - though there is no way to listen to them when they were performing.”
“I think the best songs are being written by the very under-stated, under-appreciated indie artists. The thing that separates them from mainstream success is they either consciously or unknowingly refuse to deliver on a big chorus.”
“If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it's not alright; they think he's crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy...”
“A woman can be in charge!”

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