"one cannot do just anything. a talented artist cannot do whatever he pleases. if he only used his gifts, he would not exist. we are not the masters of what we produce. it is imposed on us."

~   henri matisse
henri matissematissemodernartartistquotetalentexistmaster
9th Apr 2013✧18:514 notes

"a still life asserts itself as a portrait while remaining a still life."

~   jennifer raab
jennifer raabquoteartstill lifehistorypaintingphotography
2nd Apr 2013✧19:011 note

"the mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place."

~   foucault
foucaultmichel foucaultquotetheoryessaymirrorutopiaplacespaceplaceless
5th Mar 2013✧18:578 notes

"photographs are not instantaneous. there is a passage of time involved in picture making."

~   david alekhuogie
david alekhuogiephotographyquotechicagoculturalpersonalimage makinginstanttime
25th Feb 2013✧20:073 notes

"the meaning of a picture is never inscribed on its surface as brushstrokes are: meaning arises in the collaboration between signs (visual and verbal) and interpreters."

~   norman bryson
norman brysonstill lifeessaytheoryartcontemporaryquote
19th Feb 2013✧18:043 notes

"What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself."

~   roland barthes
photographywrestlingroland barthesbarthesessayquotemythologiesartcotemporarymodern
13th Feb 2013✧10:19159 notes

"why, then, should the semblance of two gigantic green cabbages in a work of art seem so exhilarating - and why should a painter wish to represent them in the first place?"

~   erika langmuir
erika langmuirstill lifecabbagequotenational galleryphotographycontemporary artart
31st Jan 2013✧19:15

"her eyes weren’t brown but a dark, dusty black - the kind of velvet you see backgrounding jewelry displays."

~   the body, stephen king
stephen kingquotethe bodystand by medeerbackgroundvelvetjewelrydarkdustyblackbrownfictionhorrorkingmaster
3rd Jun 2012✧14:4810 notes

"listening to rainer, serge thinks of entrances to cave and wells, of worm- and foxholes, rabbits’ burrows, and all things that lead into the earth."

~   c by tom mccarthy
quotetom mccarthyc
17th Jan 2012✧08:103 notes

"it was in this familiar darkness…that he’d first felt homesick."

~   second lives by daniel alarcón
daniel alarconsecond liveshomesickdarknessshort storyquoteexcerptbest ofamerican2011
17th Jan 2012✧07:5828 notes

"next to it were five spotted photographs of the lisbon girls, pinned with rusty tacks. we didn’t remember putting them up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were the phosphorescent outlines of the girls’ bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet."

~   the virgin suicides, jeffrey eugenides
the virgin suicidesvirginsuicidemysteryjeffrey eugenideseugenidesbookquoteexcerpt
23rd Dec 2011✧01:3013 notes

"in the history of sound, nobody has ever said a girl’s name that way before."

~   swamplandia!, karen russell
karen russellswamplandia!swamplandialiteraturequotesoundhistorybooksbest
22nd Aug 2011✧19:321 note

"language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and the glory of the world. to deconstruct. to dismiss. she said people can’t deal with how beautiful the world really is. how it can’t be explained and understood."

~   choke by chuck palahniuk
chokequotebookreadChuck Palahniukpalahniuk
13th Jul 2011✧12:485 notes

"it was his first child and he had always been careful not to have children, fearing that they would murder him somehow, but now he was insane and she delighted him."

~   tales of ordinary madness, charles bukowski, 1967
bukowskiknowledgequotemoderncontemporaryshort storiesordinarymadnesschildreninsanemurder
5th May 2011✧19:492 notes

"and then i think he must be seeing something that nobody’s invented the words for yet. a slick world that no sound will adhere to."

~   st. lucy’s home for girls raised by wolves, karen russell
wolveskaren russellstoriesfictionshortcollectionquotebooknovelamerican
1st Apr 2011✧10:17
Opaque  by  andbamnan