Beal Quotes & Sayings

People tend to believe that I want to make soul music, which is not entirely untrue but, really, I want to be like the black Tom Waits - I don't want to make one kind of sound. — Willis Earl Beal

Everything is this distorted mishmash of pop culture that pulls from this era and that era and is just thrown at the wall. These people have no clue what anything really means. There are guys out there getting a million hits for a video. — Willis Earl Beal

Keep painting your demons. — Jack Beal

Here and throughout the Gospels, Jesus does not simply cite Scripture as though it were a self-evident, self-interpreting source of authority. He rereads it, drawing out new, often highly provocative meanings, "fulfilling" it in a way that gives it new form for a new day. What would Jesus do? Reread. The Bible tells me so. — Timothy Beal

The icon of the Bible as God's textbook for the world is as bankrupt as the idea that it stands for, of religious faith as absolute black-and-white certainty. Just as the cultural icon of the flag often becomes a substitute for patriotism, and just as the cultural icon of the four-wheel-drive truck often becomes a substitute for manly independence and self-confidence, so the cultural icon of the Bible often becomes a substitute for a vital life of faith, which calls not for obedient adherence to clear answers but thoughtful engagement with ultimate questions. The Bible itself invites that kind of engagement. The iconic image of it as a book of answers discourages it. — Timothy Beal

Trying to improve your online reputation during a crisis is like trying to eat healthy food during a heart attack. — Andy Beal

But what really won me over was his butt. What finally made it impossible for me not to like the man was how right out there on the Adventist basepaths, right in front of eighty or ninety of the kind of pious adult spectators who spent their every Sabbath if not their entire lives trying to forget the existence of things like butts, Beal's buns were trying to light a fire by friction inside his jeans; they were gyrating like a washing machine with its load off balance; they were thrashing against his pants like two big halibut against the bottom of a boat. And the wonderful thing, the amazing thing, was how once his older audience got over the shock of it, they began to look amused at, then fascinated by, and finally downright grateful toward his writhing reminder that yes, buns did exist, and yes, every one of us owned not one but two of the things, and yes, like the God who created them in His Image, they did indeed move in mysterious ways. — David James Duncan

Bible publishers are not selling Bibles. What they're selling is that iconic idea of the Bible. Their value-added biblical content promises to provide answers to questions, solutions to problems, and speaks in no uncertain terms about God's plan for your life and how to live it. Adding value to the Bible almost always means adding "biblical" values that are either missing or really hard to find in the Bible itself but that provide that feeling of Bibleness so many seek. — Timothy Beal

Indeed, like so many encounters with Jesus in the Gospel stories, we might go to the Bible looking for answers, but we usually come away with more questions. — Timothy Beal

Biblical interpretation is not a passive matter. It requires our own active negotiation. When we pretend that, deep down, all the voices are really saying the same thing and ought to be able to get along, we forfeit our responsibility as inheritors of this richly, sometimes disturbingly, contradictive literature. — Timothy Beal

We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it. — Frances M. Beal

In a way, the whole music industry is just catering to the inherent esteem issues all these artists have - it lays it all out on the line and baits the artist, like a light baits a mosquito. And you go right into it. With every comment on the internet, you go up, you go down, and it's a big shitshow full of uneducated people. — Willis Earl Beal

Or maybe this is justice. Maybe I've allowed myself to become this fucked-up, depressed, misunderstood person. Maybe this is all my fault. Maybe I should have killed Asher Beal. I mean, I was so angry. Asher definitely deserved to die.67 Or maybe I should have tried to save Asher back when all the bad shit began - before he turned full-on evil? — Matthew Quick

The Bible is not a book of answers but a library of questions. — Timothy Beal

Only at the end of the last stroke of paint, you can begin to wonder what needs to be done next. — Stephen Beal

About two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible "answers all or most of the basic questions of life" - and 28 percent of them admit that they rarely or never read it! — Timothy Beal

My studio work is a central part of my life and I'd be at loose ends without it. When I'm not in my studio, I don't stop thinking about painting. — Stephen Beal

The earliest known copies of Jewish Scriptures in Hebrew dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries CE, and among them the differences were mostly small and insignificant. Taking them as witnesses to the earlier texts from which they were copied, it seemed logical to conclude that these many homogeneous texts must have derived from a common original via a highly accurate scribal tradition. But evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to contradict this conclusion. Among the hundreds of biblical manuscripts discovered there, many of which are more than a thousand years older than anything scholars had ever seen before, we find not uniformity but diversity, including many significant differences. The logical assumption now is that Jewish Scriptures became more uniform and free of variants over time, as scribes gradually established a more or less standard edition. — Timothy Beal

The idea of the Bible as a divine guidebook, a map for getting through the terra incognita of life, is our golden calf. It's a substitute for the wilderness wandering that the life of faith necessarily entails. — Timothy Beal

I am very invested in the physical activity and the decision-making that is involved with making paintings - nothing else is quite like it. — Stephen Beal

My life as a painter influences my teaching and my duties as president of CCA - and I hope some of the experience of working at an exciting art school also spills over into my studio work. I believe most artists are adept at juggling multiple responsibilities - whether it's work, teaching, caring for family members or attending to relationships - with their studio commitment. — Stephen Beal

To die for the revolution is a one-shot deal; to live for the revolution means taking on the more difficult commitment of changing our day-to-day life patterns. — Frances M. Beal

M S S S T S C P U E S A L L I A E C E E G P N L D D M Q A C I G U A Q P D T U D S A C C A E U A A Q F L T E I E A P N A E C L S E U A H 0 E E I E E E O O A N P P A A N P X E P S A A E E R E E U E L A N R U E E U N E I U R E R S N R U L E O S N T O O R N I A U S N U I 0 R U S P T N U R E E E M D P C T E T R R S A S R A R R E M I R E E S X T E T M T C A E U T D U M C E I T E T S 0 B R T E T P E C E E E A T E D S G S N B D E M R R A T E T C T E R L T R T 0 E T S E I S L L E E I O T E E E E T E R H S E E O 0 R E A T E I E E N R T S U E E T I 0 E S L R E B E R S R R 0 E U U E U E 0 C R S C 0 T T 0 I I 0 B B 0 L L 0 E E — Olivier BEAL

My delusion outweighs my talent by far and it always will, because if it doesn't, then there's no point in living. — Willis Earl Beal

The paintings are more about physicality and gesture than meditation. I'd compare it to playing scales on the Cello - each sound (pitch and intensity) depends on the manner in which you hold and apply the bow. The same goes for the gesture of applying paint to a surface. — Stephen Beal

We're used to picturing the genealogy of a text like a family tree: one original at the base ascending like a single trunk, with copies branching off it, and copies of copies branching off them. And so on throughout the generations. We imagine an original from which all the generations of diversity spring as scribes make revisions and introduce copying errors. But the reverse seems to be the case when it comes to the origins of the Bible: the further you go back in its literary history, the less uniformity there is. Scriptural traditions are rooted, quite literally, in diversity. — Timothy Beal

Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what's at stake, namely its credibility as God's infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably. But you can't fail at something you're not trying to do. To ask whether the Bible fails to give consistent answers or be of one voice with itself presumes that it was built to do so. That's a false presumption, rooted no doubt in thinking of it as the book that God wrote. As we have seen, biblical literature is constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself. Virtually nothing is asserted someplace that is not called into question or undermined elsewhere. — Timothy Beal

The history of the Bible is one of perpetual revolution. In that light, we might begin to think about the Bible not so much as a fixed thing but as a dynamic, vital tradition. In light of its history, the Bible looks less like a rock than a river, continually flowing and changing, widening and narrowing, as it moves downstream.

For some, thinking about the Bible as a river and not a rock is liberating. That rock has been a millstone around the neck and a tombstone that won't be rolled away. But for others, seeing it this way can be disorienting. That rock has promised solid foundation in a stormy world. Cling to it or be swept away. — Timothy Beal

I moved to Chicago and began attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The students and teachers I met in Chicago were politically active and also passionate about the same things that I was interested in. It was a great match for me. — Stephen Beal

Like my peers, I believed that the Bible was God's Word written down for me, answering all my questions about who God is and what God wants for my life, from the mundane to the ultimate. Or at least I knew that was what I needed to believe. But that was not what I found when I actually opened the Bible up and looked around inside. — Timothy Beal

All art is advertising. It stands for a particular point of view. Art that exploits badness is advertising badness. — Jack Beal

To be sure, all translation is interpretation. ... Be that as it may, functional-equivalence translations, which presume that ambiguity, multivalence, and contradiction are by definition not part of the Bible, take far more creative and interpretive license than formal ones in eradicating those features. In so doing, they too often try to make the Bible into something it's not. — Timothy Beal

I enjoy thinking about how paintings can change depending on where they are - how they look in a gallery or in relation to other paintings, or in different rooms. Paintings can change the way we experience and see the world. — Stephen Beal

I have been interested in the dialogue of abstraction and modernist painting - and the rich history of the grid. I also think I have been influenced a bit by some of the particular qualities of the Bay Area. The weather and the atmosphere here is so exotic, like the fog rolling in and the nuanced differences in the quality of light. — Stephen Beal

... food is capable of feeding far more than a rumbling stomach. Food is life; our well-being demands it. Food is art and magic; it evokes emotion and colors memory, and in skilled hands, meals become greater than the sum of their ingredients. Food is self-evident; plucked right from the ground or vine or sea, its power to delight is immediate. Food is discovery; finding an untried spice or cuisine is for me like uncovering a new element. Food is evolution; how we interpret it remains ever fluid. Food is humanitarian: sharing it bridges cultures, making friends of strangers pleasantly surprised to learn how much common ground they ultimately share. — Anthony Beal

I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something. — Willis Earl Beal

I'm interested in how paintings can change or transform - sometimes through close examination or viewed from afar; or how they hold the space of a wall or interact in a room with each other. — Stephen Beal

In the late 60's I was enrolled at Occidental College majoring in philosophy and taking several studio art classes, but I dropped out. It was a very confusing time with the war in Vietnam and the social changes sweeping the nation. — Stephen Beal

Mercy, how we do so often love to immortalize those despised and forgotten in life. — Timothy Beal

I have, and do sometimes, work with other media. But there is something about the physical activity and the directness of painting that I find fascinating. I am very attracted to the materiality of paintings and the visual phenomena of hue and value. — Stephen Beal

In writing, as in life, there'll always be that one person throwing roses when everyone else is throwing tomatoes; make that person the one who matters. — Anthony Beal

Most students don't trust their own insights and questions when they are reading a biblical assignment. They expect that there must be a point, a right reading that they're missing, and that they don't have the authority to suggest any other interpretation. — Timothy Beal

I don't have a computer, but when I get access to one, I'm always looking myself up on Google, because it's exciting. — Willis Earl Beal

I am nothing; nothing is everything — Willis Earl Beal

Let me state here and now that the black woman in America can justly be described as a 'slave of a slave. — Frances M. Beal

The advertising media in this country continuously informs the American male of his need for indispensable signs of his virility ... — Frances M. Beal

For many potential Bible readers, this expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't find an obvious way to reconcile them. You figure that it must be your problem. You don't know how to read it correctly, or you're missing something. You're not holy enough to read the Holy Bible. It might even be sacrilege for you to try. If the Bible is God's perfect infallible Word, then any misunderstanding or ambiguity must be the result of our own depravity. That is, our sinful nature as fallen creatures is what separates us from God, and therefore from God's Word. So you either give up or let someone holier than thou tell you "what it really says." I think that's tragic. You're letting someone else impoverish it for you, when in fact you have just brushed up against the rich polyvocality of biblical literature. — Timothy Beal

In many ways, those dedicated to removing all potential biblical contradictions, to making the Bible entirely consistent with itself, are no different from irreligious debunkers of the Bible, Christianity, and religion in general. Many from both camps seem to believe that simply demonstrating that the Bible is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, as I have just done, is enough to discredit any religious tradition that embraces it as Scripture. Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. — Timothy Beal

I'd rather be somewhere building a house, if I knew how. The whole idea of being a professional artist is like a demeaning kind of thing. — Willis Earl Beal

For thousands of years art was seen as a source of responsible moral and ethical leadership. Today, taking that stance is almost seen as comic. — Jack Beal

The Bible appears to be the most revered book never read. — Timothy Beal

Most scrolls in the ancient world were between twenty and thirty feet long. Much longer and they were hard to handle. In fact, texts were written to accommodate this general standard of length, once again illustrating the inseparability of medium and message. — Timothy Beal

Everything that I do is limitation and complete intuition. I'm a human being. I'm not a musician. I'm not an entertainer. I don't know anything! — Willis Earl Beal