"Do the work you are most proud of"

-- Dorie Greenspan

“A work of art is itself an object, first of all, and so manipulation is unavoidable: it's a prerequisite. But I needed the greater objectivity of the photograph in order to correct my own way of seeing: for instance, if I draw an object from nature, I start to stylize and to change it in accordance with my personal vision and my training. But if I paint from a photograph, I can forget all the criteria that I get from these sources. I can paint against my will, as it were. And that, to me, felt like an enrichment.”
“The man, the art, the work--it is all one.”

Source : Eugen Herrigel (1964). “Zen”
“It was God who dictated what man should believe and do, leaving man the freedom to accept or scoff, to obey or disregard.”

Source : Israel Shenker (1985). “Coat of Many Colors: Pages from Jewish Life”, Doubleday Books
“Disease preys on a weak and malnourished mind.”
“George Bowering doesn’t play fair. Baseball Love is so good there is no memoir in the league that can go up against it. Bowering has a sense of story and an eye for detail that eliminate the possibility that he was a lousy second baseman. Reading a home run is fun.”
“A democracy, the realistic observer is forced to conclude, is likely to be idealistic in its feelings about itself, but imperialistic about its practice.”

Source : Irving Babbitt (2005). “On Literature, Cultures, and Religion”, p.154, Transaction Publishers
“I think we all lose in the end because we don't get to stay here forever.”
“I just don't like to be in my own - I'm already myself, so I don't like to be in my own - like, watch myself.”

Source : "Jazz Singer Cécile McLorin Salvant Doesn't Want To Sound 'Clean And Pretty'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 4, 2015.

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