I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
—Federico Fellini, c. 1950
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Quotes
Oil! Our secret god, our secret sharer, our magic wand, fulfiller of our every desire, our coconspirator, the sine qua non in all we do!
—Margaret Atwood, 2015Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.
—Andy Warhol, 1975Uprootedness is by far the most dangerous malady to which human societies are exposed, for it is a self-propagating one.
—Simone Weil, 1943A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.
—Cicero, 44 BCLet me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
—James Madison, 1794To teach is to learn twice over.
—Joseph Joubert, c. 1805The brain is an unreliable organ, it is monstrously great, monstrously developed. Swollen, like a goiter.
—Aleksandr Blok, c. 1920Family! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
—August Strindberg, 1886The sea hath no king but God alone.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1881All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.
—Mencius, c. 330 BCTo be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.
—Edward O. Wilson, 2009