20th-century Artist Quotes

I'm telling you, the gorgeous of the world can actually look pretty intimidating when they scowl. Imagine a snow-white swan with a scary tattoo holding a chain saw. There's just no way to really prepare for that.

Can you know excellence if you've never seen it? Can you know good if you have seen only bad?

E. L. Konigsburg

Originality houses many rooms, and the views from the windows are all different.

God knows, there's enough to worry about without worrying about worrying about things.

My captain once said that you meet people in your life who you believe will be your companions on the road, only to discover that they fall by the wayside. Others who you meet without design climb mountains with you,

Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
And ever after called him a curse,
Then why did he hurry to let him in?
He could have hid in the house.

I've realized over the years that, with rare exceptions, most writer's block isn't writer's block at all: It's necessary time that allows the unconscious mind to do its deep work. The great Ah-Ha! moments don't usually come at the keyboard. They come when I'm lying on the floor, staring into space (or banging my head against the wall in frustration). All of a sudden the Unconscious Camera turns on, a movie starts playing in my head-and there it is: The Big Moment. Or the Whole Damn Story. And, in many ways, I had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

J. M. DeMatteis

I'm always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn.

Through her, in microcosm, the wide earth sobbed. The starglobe sank in her; the colours faded. The death-dew rose and the wild birds in her breast climbed to her throat and gathered songless, hovering, all tumult, wing to wing, so ardent for those climes where all things end.

His mother saw that he was not lonesome, and because she was an understanding mother, even though she was a cow, she let him just sit there and be happy.

I believe that most of us would like to be thought well of by horses.

If you know something bad is coming, can't you plan to avoid it or try to do something differently?" said Charles. Probably", said the Cartographer, "but then the good events would have no flavor. The joy you find in life is paid for by suffering that comes later, just as sometimes, the suffering is redeemed by a joy unexpected. That's the trade that makes a life worth living.

If not for the long tail, one might mistake a theropod for a big, toothy, marauding bird in the dark. That theropods are birdlike is logical, since birds are their closest living relatives. Remember that next time you eat a drumstick or scramble some eggs.

Gregory Scott Paul

Stories twist and turn and grow and meet and give birth to other stories. Here and there, one story touches another, and a familiar character, sometimes the hero, walks over the bridge from one story into another.

Marcus Sedgwick

For I am coconut / and the heart of me / is sweeter / than you know.

Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.

While "cute" is hopelessly anchored to the Teletubby ideal, "ugly" is free to take infinite varieties. In this way, ugly is beautiful...

Once you use a toothbrush to clean a pencil sharpener, you should no longer use it to clean your teeth.

David Rees (cartoonist)

I don't make fun of a face. I make fun of what is behind that face.

I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

I think that if advanced beings were visiting Earth, we'd know it by their laughter.

Sure he (Fred Astaire) was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards... and in high heels.

Not all the war correspondents [in Afghanistan] were nervous. My wife asked a journalist covering the Khanabad front why he didn't wear a bulletproof vest. (At $1,200 each, we couldn't afford them.) "Are you kidding?" the heavyset photographer for The San Jose Mercury News replied as he wiped his brow. "It's too hot out here."

Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection... nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family..

Berkeley Breathed

If half the engineering effort and public interest that go into the research of the American bosom had gone into our guided-missile program, we would now be running hot-dog stands on the moon.