#rat

The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health, electricity, chemistry and agriculture, were being, if not laid, at least mapped out, people could still believe in the existence of devils and demons. And why not? A good ghost story is pure entertainment. It was not until well into the twentieth century that ghost stories began to have a deeper significance and to become allegorical; in fact, to lose their charm. No mental effort is required to read 'The Weird Woman', no seeking for hidden meanings; there are no complexities of plot, no allegory on the state of the world. And so it should be. At what other point in literary history could a man, standing over the body of his fiancee, say such a line as this: 'Speak, hound! Or, by heaven, this night shall witness two murders instead of one!' Those were the days. (introduction to "The Weird Woman") ↗

— Hugh Lamb

#ghost-story #horror #victorian #victorian-age #victorian-era

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write? ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#destiny #inspirational #on-writing #art

Ignore all hatred and criticism. Live for what you create, and die protecting it. ↗

— Lady Gaga

#inspirational #music #art

I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality. ↗

— Frida Kahlo

#dreams #inspirational #nightmares #painting #art

I’m not saying that you should deny the difficult events of your life. But the fact that you survived is also a wonderful story to tell. And that story, the story of the way you came through a difficult situation, found resources within yourself or outside of yourself, gleaned from that experience what you wanted and what you didn’t want going forward — that is a story that can inspire you and others to heal and grow. ↗

— Golda Poretsky

#inspirational-quotes #experience

A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#cod #fish #humor #images #inspirational

To draw something is to try to capture it FOREVER, if you really love something, you never try to keep it the way it is forever. You have to let it be free to change ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#inspirational #jocelyn #love #painting #art

Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#art #dance #exaggeration #film #architecture

[T]he race is long - to finish first, first you must finish. ↗

— Garth Stein

#art

Vital lives are about action. You can't feel warmth unless you create it, can't feel delight until you play,can't know serendipity unless you risk. ↗

— Joan Erickson

#inspiration #life #risk #serendipity #art