Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all read more

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

From the shore.. one looks
upward to the sanddune grass..
10,000
green brushes attempting
where they laid
to paint read more

From the shore.. one looks
upward to the sanddune grass..
10,000
green brushes attempting
where they laid
to paint the blue sky
jade.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to read more

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a read more

Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from read more

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs read more

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack read more

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it "joy"?.