#lit

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#make #reality #unbearable #without #world

To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is. ↗

— David McCullough

#civic-responsibility #history #humanity #life #mankind

All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art. ↗

— Roman Payne

#artists #awkwardness #bizarre #clumsiness #good-art

Aria: I went to Hollis. Because I was looking for...you know. Her. She was teaching an art class, so I ran inside, grabbed a paintbrush, and painted a scarlet A across her chest. You know, like that woman in The Scarlet Letter? It was awesome. She didn't know what hit her. And then I said, 'Now everyone will know what you've done'. Ella: Do you realize that Hester Prynne is supposed to be a sympathetic character? ↗

— Sara Shepard

#perfect #pretty-little-liars #art

Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate. ↗

— Sun Tzu

#people #predictability #surprise #art

Courage is indispensible because in politics not life but the world is at stake. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#politics #courage

To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself. This isn't the case with literature. Literature stimulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#literature #art

It was queer how sometimes a child's innocent eyes can see things that grown men are blind to. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#game-of-thrones #reality #truth #courage

Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave? ↗

— Roman Payne

#carpenter #courage #esteem #genius #happiness

The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all. ↗

— Anneli Rufus

#artists #fashion #introverts #looks #vulnerability