Words of Wisdom

“Ideally, each piece of art’s its own unique object, and its evaluation’s always present-tense.”—David Foster Wallace

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference the lightning-bug and the lightning.”—Mark Twain

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”—Charles Bukowski

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
—Herman Melville

“There’s nothing like music to relieve the soul and uplift it.”
—Mickey Hart

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success—but only if you persist.”—Isaac Asimov

“The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses, would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist…what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.”—Plato

“I must despise the world which does not feel that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”—Ludwig van Beethoven, who died on this day in 1827.

“You can’t give up something you really believe in for financial reasons. If you die by the roadside—so be it. But at least you know you’ve tried. Ten minutes in the music scene was the equal of one hundred years outside of it.”—Robert Plant

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”—Pablo Picasso