“Maybe that’s why I write—in a journal. That feels “right.” I know I’m alone, that I’m the only reader of what I write here—but the knowledge isn’t painful, on the contrary I feel stronger for it, stronger each time I write something down. (Hence my worry this past year—I felt myself terribly weakened by the fact that I couldn’t write in the journal, didn’t want to, was blocked, or whatever.) I can’t talk to myself, but I can write to myself.”
— Susan Sontag
“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.”
— James Baldwin
“We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people.”
— Michel de Montaigne
“Ed’s Drawing Books in many ways are about knocking the title of ‘art’ off its big and scary perch. The books show you ways to draw, not ways to be an artist. In fact, the words ‘art’ or ‘artist’ are nowhere to be found in the Drawing Book series, save for the mandatory Library of Congress shelving notes. When he does talks for young people, Ed likes to say that he “draws pictures for a living.” In his Drawing Books, he wasn’t out to spawn legions of artists, he was out to give kids the tickle of fun and success by drawing something that they might not have thought they could draw. “Not everyone needs to be an artist,” he says, “but everyone needs to feel good about themselves.” And it’s key to Ed’s worldview that one can have fun drawing without the burdensome idea of being an ‘artist,’ just as one can have fun playing catch or shooting baskets without needing to think of one’s self as an ‘athlete.'”
— Caleb Neelon on illustrator Ed Emberley
“Lots of people copy, lots of people don’t copy. I copy. I find it teaches me things and above all it gives me consolation.”
— Vincent Van Gogh
“I think part of the power of any artwork is the physical presence you sense behind the creation. A real person made these things, and when you see the actual drawings, you can participate in that.”
— Bill Watterson
“Sure, everything’s been done, but it’s much healthier not to know about it.”
— Orson Welles
“People like me, who care about printing, constitute the tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation.”
— Leonard Baskin
“A question: do I love laziness more than I love the feeling of accomplishing work (writing, learning German, French; studying)? It seems that way. I take the path of least resistance and curl up with a book. Everyone else seems to be doing valuable work: social work, cancer research, teaching, degree getting, mothering. What can I do?
I feel really uncreative. After talking with Mary Ellen Chase, I self-paralyze myself & wonder what I’ve got in my head. How to teach anyone anything? That would do me the most good, I think. The day by day teaching. Looked at in one gulp, it terrifies. As does the Novel. The Exams. But hour by hour, day by day, life becomes possible.”
— Sylvia Plath (journal entry, December 31, 1958)
“If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s to trust my own judgment. Which is not to say that it’s right—it’s just mine.”
— Frederick Wiseman
