Quotes & Sayings About Memory And Art

In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could
a look, a whisper, a moan
to salvage from perishing to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all. — Khaled Hosseini

Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing. — Lewis Hyde

In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure ... — Madeleine L'Engle

Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record. — Andre Maurois

In her eyes was the reflection of everything that mattered: old diners with neon signs, vinyl records, celluloid film, drive-in movies, Pears soap, department stores, her brother's old blue Camaro car and the smell of coal dust in the rainy sky of a summer lightning storm.
... And all the nice bright colors of the past that she thought were gone for good came flowing back into her life like a wave of nostalgia flooding over her, reds, yellows, blues and greens drenching her gray memories in psychedelic ribbons and glittering fireworks.
... She hoped that the world would always hold those miniscule yet beautiful, deep and mysterious traces of memory. — Rebecca McNutt

Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter- this is what life is, herein lies its task. I have come to recognize this. This idea has entered into my flesh and blood. Yes, it's true! That head which created, lived b the hightes life of art, which acknowledged and had come to know the highest demands of the spirit, that head has been cut from my shoulders. Memory remains, and the images I have created and still not molded in flesh. They will leave their harsh mark on me, it is true! But my heart is left me, and the same flesh and blood which likewise can love and suffer and desire and remember, and this is, after all, life. on voit le soleil! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My life of conversation leads me to reimagine the very meaning of hope. I define hope as distinct from optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing. It references reality at every turn and reveres truth. It lives open eyed and wholeheartedly with the darkness that is woven ineluctably into the light of life and sometimes seems to overcome it. Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a habit that becomes spiritual muscle memory. — Krista Tippett

The image of feeling created by artists, in every kind of art
plastic, musical, poetic, balletic
serves to hold the reality itself for our labile and volatile memory, as a touchstone to test the scope of our intellectual constructions. — Susanne Katherina Langer

The vast majority of you are going to close this tab without, even for a single moment, entertaining the thought of writing something.

Step outside your comfort zone and try something new. Learning the fine rationalist art of CoZE (comfort zone expansion) is a really important life skill, and putting your writing online is a low-risk way to do that. Don't try to cop out with "I don't have any stories." Baloney. Everyone has stories; write up a memory that's important to you. And don't even try to tell me, "Oh, but I don't know how to write!" Neither did I when I started; I learned by doing. So please, set the excuses aside, put something up on the web, and share it with the rest of us. When you do, drop me a PM; I'll leave you your first review, but you have to publish something first.

Well? What are you waiting for? Seriously. Go write one sentence of a new story, write now. — David K. Storrs

Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things ... " she held up four big-knuckled fingers. " ... the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing ... " She closed her fingers into a fist. " ... without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition! — Frank Herbert

It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her. — Anais Nin

Having Simultanagnosia (object blindness), Prosopagnosia (face blindness) and Semantic Agnosia (meaning blindness) goes in my favour with regards to abstract art living in world full of fragmented pieces when I draw it is in real time no visual memory means no "pre-formatted" picture in my mind so I go where my hand takes it's like journey that is happening in the moment, hence why I drew these without my lenses on. When I was younger I would draw pictures by "route" which made it a appear that I had a visual memory (cobbling together things out of context and making a contextual image) — Paul Isaacs

I am grateful, and would thank the Gods(if there were any to thank) that I have finally mastered this art of forgetting
of murdering the memory. — Caryl Phillips

She dug into one of the boxes, finding clay angels she'd made in art class when she was seven years old. She found plastic swans on strings and red crystal cardinals. She found a blue-and-white rocking horse covered in glitter. She found a porcelain Santa Claus. She found that she couldn't figure out where the hell time had gone. — Rebecca McNutt

After illuminating the work of Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Louise Bourgeois, Balthus, and other modern artists, Mieke Bal again demonstrates her extraordinary flair for cultural criticism in taking on the work of Doris Salcedo, exploring the philosophical and aesthetic stakes of this committed political art and the relation between beauty, violence, and memory. A tour de force. — Jonathan Culler

Consider this: billions of people in the world, each with billions of I ams. I am a quiet observer, a champion wallflower. I am a lover of art, the Mets, the memory of Dad. I represent approximately one seven-billionth of the population; these are my momentous multitudes, and that's just for starters. — David Arnold

We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. — Joshua Foer

I know thou art gone to the home of thy rest
Then why should my soul be so sad?
I know thou art gone where the weary are blest,
And the mourner looks up, and is glad;
I know thou hast drank of the Lethe that flows
In a land where they do not forget,
That sheds over memory only repose,
And takes from it only regret. — Thomas Kibble Hervey

How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember ... No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory ... Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it's about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have became estranged ... memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. — Joshua Foer

Gather knowledge ... Visit galleries, museums, art and craft fairs ... Read books and magazines. Take workshops. Use your senses. Experience stimulates your memory and imagination. — Nita Leland

Forgotten Stars. Time in the Flame.
Missing Shard. The Only Rain.
Door of the Memory. Waves in the Silk.
Silent Birch. Thoughts of Lunatics.
Secret of the Flowers. Soaring of the Souls.
Heart in the Night. And a Kiss Unfolds.
Forgotten Voyager. Voyage in the Words.
Nothing of the World. Someone of the Hemisphere.
Trembling Stones. Sucking Tears.
The Next Gift. The World in the Kisses.
Missing Angels. The Woman of the Girl.
Guardian of the Rings. Thorn in the Pearl.
Whispering Sword. Touching exclaim.
Soul in the Truth. Heat in the Flame.
Thy name, my name, Thy name!
Came. Became. To Remain. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Humans make art to remember and be remembered," said Caius. "Art is their weapon against forgetting. — Melissa Grey

It was about the preciousness of that, and how they viewed those birds as art, as something valuable. I didn't care one way or another back then, but now, thinking about my grandparents - who are still alive but getting older - I see the birds as sort of time capsules. Now I go home during the holidays and they hold a lot of weight in terms of nostalgia and memory. Now they mean everything. — Nick Cave

In effect, painting is the still memory of [the artist's] human motion, and our individual responses to it depend on who we are, on our character, which underlines the simple truth that no person leaves himself behind in order to look at a painting. — Siri Hustvedt

In this science the illustrations and examples are not confined in their effect merely to the practice they afford in the analytical art, but [ ... ] they also store the mind with independent geometrical and physical knowledge. Besides, it should be considered, that the only effectual method of impressing abstract formulae and rules upon the memory, and, indeed, of making them fully and clearly apprehended by the understanding, is by examples of their practical application. — Dionysius Lardner

Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art. — Mark Helprin

I have occupied this idle, empty winter with writing a story. It has been written to please myself, without thought of my own vanity or modesty, without regard for other people's feelings, without considering whether I shock or hurt the living, without scrupling to speak of the dead.

The world, I know, is changing. I am not indifferent to the revolution that has caught us in its mighty skirts, to the enormity of the flood that is threatening to submerge us. But what could I do? In the welter of the surrounding storm, I have taken refuge for a moment on this little raft, constructed with the salvage of my memory. I have tried to steer it into that calm haven of art in which I still believe. I have tried to avoid some of the rocks and sandbanks that guard its entrance.

[from the introduction] — Dorothy Bussy

The autobiographical self has prompted extended memory, reasoning, imagination, creativity and language. And out of that came the instruments of culture - religions, justice, trade, the arts, science, technology. — Antonio Damasio

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time
back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. — Thomas Wolfe

Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments. — Elbert Hubbard

The truth is impossible to comprehend even when one is willing to tell it. For the truth resides in memory and memory is clouded with repression and a desire to embellish. The recollections of any individual are conditioned by the general truths to which he or she has tried to live. To recall an event is to interpret it, so the truth is altered by the very act of remembering. Therefore the truth, like God, does not exist - only the search for it. — Frank Hardy

True alchemy lies in this formula: 'Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse'. — Arthur Rimbaud

Because writers remember everything, Paul. Especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels, not amnesia. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is that ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory. Who — Stephen King

The principle of painting is also to make a choice. "Even genius," writes Delacroix, ruminating on his art,
"is only the gift of generalizing and choosing." The painter isolates his subject, which is the first way of
unifying it. Landscapes flee, vanish from the memory, or destroy one another. That is why the landscape
painter or the painter of still life isolates in space and time things that normally change with the light, get
lost in an infinite perspective, or disappear under the impact of other values. The first thing that a
landscape painter does is to square off his canvas. He eliminates as much as he includes. — Albert Camus

An artist adopts a radically different view regarding the importance of time than a businessperson does. Instead of perceiving time as a merchantable facet doled out incrementally according to marketplace demands, an artist portrays time as an agent of destruction. The irrevocability of time frames the human condition. Time might the medium of all human experience, but its passage obscures and eventually obliterates all human endeavors. Time unchecked leads to a blank slate of nothingness. Time's destructive march towards meaningless is arrested through memory and art depicting humankind's struggles and accomplishments. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists. — John Locke

Oh, I'm real. I'm the story of Sheresa. I write a little bit of the fiction of me every day. You see what I'm talking about? Then once you have the boundaries of history and fiction secure, where does everything else fall? Somewhere in between the two. History holds up one side of our lives and fiction the other. Mother, father. Birth, death, and in between, that's where you find religion. That's where you find art, science, engineering. It's where things get made from belief and memory. — Samantha Hunt

It's not words, but years we should be editing. Remember: time spent on bad art is a form of redundancy, doing the same thing twice is a form of tautology, and wasting precious moments complaining about life is a form of pleonasm. We should all learn to live our lives concisely. — Anthony Marais

Sculpture is a parable in three dimensions, a symbol of a spiritual experience, and a means of conveying truth by concentrating its essence into visible form ... It must be the reflection of the artist who creates it and of the era in which he lives, not an echo or a memory of other days and other ways. — Malvina Hoffman

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present. — George Santayana

According to the scientist, time is interminable and inexhaustible. The artist is more inclined to relate the passage of time as a subject involving the randomness of memory and humankind's ability to create vivid recollections. Astute artists depict collections of disjointed thought fragments in paintings and literature in order to stir the pot of human consciousness. Art rests upon the correspondence between the impact of external experience and the finiteness of human life. An artist attempts to articulate answers to the mystery of being by rendering a thoughtful interpretation of the world that we occupy and experience through our senses. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection. — Mortimer J. Adler

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art; Annie Dillard and Cort Conley, eds., Modern American Memoirs; Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory; Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life; Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay; Jane Taylor McDonnell, Living to Tell the Tale: A Guide to Writing Memoir; and William Zinsser, ed., Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. — Vivian Gornick

The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us. — Oscar Wilde

It seems to me that being psycho-analysed is essentially a process where one is forced back into infantilism and then rescued from it by crystallising what one learns into a sort of intellectual primitivism-one is forced back into myth, and folk lore and everything that belongs to the savage or undeveloped stages of society. For if I say to you: I recognise in that dream,such and such a myth; or in that emotion about my father, that folk-tale; or the atmosphere of that memory is the same as an English ballad-then you smile, you are satisfied. As far as you are concerned, I've gone beyond the childish, I've transmuted it and saved it, by embodying it in myth. But in fact all I do, or you do, is to fish among the childish memories. of an individual, and merge them with the art or ideas that belong to the childhood of a people. — Doris Lessing

A public that tries to do without criticism, and asserts that it knows what it wants or likes, brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory. Art for art's sake is a retreat from criticism which ends in an impoverishment of civilized life itself. — Northrop Frye

memory is primarily an imaginative process. In fact, learning, memory, and creativity are the same fundamental process directed with a different focus," says Buzan. "The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. — Joshua Foer

The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory. — Joshua Foer

What art does is to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to its transforming power. Art is not part of the machine. Art asks us to think differently, see differently, hear differently, and ultimately to act differently, which is why art has moral force. Ruskin was right, though for the wrong reasons, when he talked about art as a moral force. Art is not about good behaviour, when did you last see a miracle behave well? Art makes us better people because it asks for our full humanity, and humanity is, or should be, the polar opposite of the merely mechanical. We are not part of the machine either, but we have forgotten that. Art is memory - which is quite different [from] history. Art asks that we remember who we are, and usually that asking has to come as provocation - which is why art breaks the rules and the taboos, and at the same time is a moral force. — Jeanette Winterson

Everywhere you walk, every place you go is full of art, explicit or hidden! If you can see them, you will be the richest art collector and your memory will be the richest art gallery! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Any kind of modification, whether it's to alter physical features, like cosmetic surgery, or to decorate, like piercings and tattoos, cause some degree of discomfort. But that's the point, isn't it? It's cathartic because it's the promise of change in some form or another. My tattoos give the memory related to the art a place to exist outside of my head, on my body. At least that's my interpretation, but not everyone feels the same way I do. — Helena Hunting

In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty. — Robert Aris Willmott

What I love about the sculpture is that it makes the bones that we are always walking and playing on manifest, like in a world that so often denies the reality of death and the reality that we are surrounded by and outnumbered by the dead. Here, is a very playful way of acknowledging that and acknowledging that and that always, whenever we play, whenever we live, we are living in both literal and metaphorical ways on the memory and bones of the dead. — John Green

When I consider the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating into the future: when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries hence arising,
I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot be mortal. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Kirk Erickson and colleagues in Art Kramer's lab hypothesized that the well-documented shrinkage of the brain with age would be reduced by exercise. They used structural scans to measure hippocampal volume in 165 healthy older people who varied in their level of physical fitness. The hippocampus is a structure deep in the temporal lobes long known to be critical for forming new memories. They found that people who showed higher aerobic fitness had larger hippocampi bilaterally. Moreover, the fitter group also showed better spatial memory performance than the less fit group. — Pamela M. Greenwood

I ate in the morning what I would digest in the evening; I swallowed as a boy what I would ruminate upon as an older man. I have thoroughly absorbed these writings, implanting them not only in my memory but in my marrow. (Quoted by Josh Foer in Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything) — Francesco Petrarca

The Sleeping

I have imagined all this:
In 1940 my parents were in love
And living in the loft on West 10th
Above Mark Rothko who painted cabbage roses
On their bedroom walls the night they got married.

I can guess why he did it.
My mother's hair was the color of yellow apples
And she wore a velvet hat with her pajamas.

I was not born yet. I was remote as starlight.
It is hard for me to imagine that
My parents made love in a roomful of roses
And I wasn't there.

But now I am. My mother is blushing.
This is the wonderful thing about art.
It can bring back the dead. It can wake the sleeping
As it might have late that night
When my father and mother made love above Rothko
Who lay in the dark thinking Roses, Roses, Roses. — Lynn Emanuel

Art thou that man,' she cries, 'who, erstwhile fed with the milk and reared upon the nourishment which is mine to give, had grown up to the full vigour of a manly spirit? And yet I had bestowed such armour on thee as would have proved an invincible defence, hadst thou not first cast it away. Dost thou know me? Why art thou silent? Is it shame or amazement that hath struck thee dumb? Would it were shame; but, as I see, a stupor hath seized upon thee.' Then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but mute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with her hand, and said: 'There is no danger; these are the symptoms of lethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. For awhile he has forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first recognises me. — Boethius

Memory, prophecy, and fantasy - The past, the future, and The dreaming moment between - Are all in one country, Living one immortal day. To know that is Wisdom. To use it is the Art. — Clive Barker

That's grossing money for other people that has a multiplying factor, but the government doesn't see that. It doesn't see that making a film or culture or art is part of our economy. But the main reason is this, it's part of our identity. I think cinema is the memory and the imagination of the country. Take the memory and imagination out of an individual and he's stops being an individual. — Philippe Falardeau

What are the tales?" Adrienne asked wryly.
"His exploits are legendary!"
"His conquests are legion. 'Tis rumored he's traveled the world accompanied by only the most beautiful lasses."
"'Tis said there isna a comely lass in all of Scotia he hasna tumbled"
"in England, too!"
"and he canna recall any of their names."
"He is said to have godlike beauty, and a practiced hand in the fine art of seduction."
"He is fabulously wealthy and rumors say his castle is luxurious beyond compare."
Adrienne blinked. "Wonderful. A materialistic, unfaithfill, beautiful playboy of a self-indulged, inconsiderate man with a bad memory. And he's all mine. Dear sweet God, what have I done to deserve this?" she wondered aloud. Twice, she brooded privately. — Karen Marie Moning

I never knew him. We both knew this place,
apparently, this literal small backwater,
looked at it long enough to memorize it,
our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved,
or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).
Our visions coincided--'visions' is
too serious a word--our looks, two looks:
art 'copying from life' and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?
Life and the memory of it cramped,
dim, on a piece of Bristol board,
dim, but how live, how touching in detail
--the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese. — Elizabeth Bishop

They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, that all of thee we loved and cherished has with thy summer roses perished; and left, as its young beauty fled, an ashen memory in its stead. — John Greenleaf Whittier

[in the true mad north] of introspection,
where 'falcons of the inner eye'
dive and die, glimpsing in their
dying fall, all life's memory of existence. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Art
make me eternal, give such body to my undying soul. ask the art, art can do it...
...art can give you the age you want, the life span you want...art can give an ever lasting face to your love and joys; art can give an unending life to your acts, and an novel agelessness to your intercourse with this life that you love and we love...we all. Love, that too is Art and fill your memory yard with its art exhibitions.... — Jamaluddin Jamali

Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a while. — W.B.Yeats

Remember first, last and always, that before you can remember, or recollect, you must first perceive; and that perception is possible only through attention, and responds in degree to the latter. Therefore, it has truly been said that: "The great Art of Memory is Attention. — William Walker Atkinson

The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection. — W. Somerset Maugham

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains.
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts
Like kings, we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand. — Alexander Pope

There was a single window that tapered into a funnel, with eerie moonlight passing through it, reflecting directly off the globe like a mirror. For a moment, as I rose I saw something glimmering within. Dumbly, with feverish whispers assailing me, I realized it was the center of one of the distant galaxies, flaring after some unknown cataclysm. Its radiance was such that it burst from its prison. It met the moonlight halfway. It created kaleidoscopic colours on the walls. Then, in answer, the reliefs transformed from majestic art into something approaching divine, alive, plays from Egyptian memory, given the spark of life from space. I saw animal-headed gods move. They stepped from the walls to take their place around the altar. All stared at the globe. Each raised their arms in silent supplication. And such was their toxic ecstasy that I wished to join them, to forget my dreadful experiences and revel in something truly wondrous. — Tim Reed

Looking at things is never time wasted. If your children want to stand and stare, let them. When I was marvelling at the beauty of a painting or enjoying a great view it did not occur to me that the experience, however intense, would be of value many years later. But there it has remained, tucked away in hidden bits of my mind and now it comes, shouldering aside even the most passionate love affairs. — Diana Athill

Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories, no efforts of memory, everything summed up in one moment. Complete art which sums up all the others and completes them. — Paul Gauguin

Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say. Art only begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work, of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic quality at any rate. — Oscar Wilde

Exhibitions of minority art are often intended to make the minority itself more aware of its collective experience. Reinforcing the common memory of miseries and triumphs will, it is expected, strengthen the unity of the group and its determination to achieve a better future. But emphasizing shared experience as opposed to the artist's consciousness of self (which includes his personal and unshared experience of masterpieces) brings to the fore the tension in the individual artist between being an artist and being a minority artist. — Harold Rosenberg

And perhaps it was precisely because she knew nothing at all about chess that chess for her was not simply a parlor game or a pleasant pastime, but a mysterious art equal to all the recognized arts. She had never been in close contact with such people - there was no one to compare him with except those inspired eccentrics, musicians and poets whose image one knows as clearly and as vaguely as that of a Roman Emperor, an inquisitor or a comedy miser. Her memory contained a modest dimly lit gallery with a sequence of all the people who had in any way caught her fancy. — Vladimir Nabokov

To get from the tangible to the intangible (which mature artists in any medium claim as part of their task) a paradox of some kind has frequently been helpful. For the photographer to free himself of the tyranny of the visual facts upon which he is utterly dependent, a paradox is the only possible tool. And the talisman paradox for unique photography is to work "the mirror with a memory" as if it were a mirage, and the camera is a metamorphosing machine, and the photograph as if it were a metaphor ... . Once freed of the tyranny of surfaces and textures, substance and form [the photographer] can use the same to pursue poetic truth" (Minor White, Newhall, 281). — Minor White

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure. — Eudora Welty

The Bible is full of thou-shalt-nots. Thou shalt not kill, that's one. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, that's two. Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife - three and four. Notice how none of them have any loopholes. There are no dependent clauses you can hang your sins on, like: Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife, unless thou art wandering in the blackest hell, lost to yourself and to every memory of light and goodness, and uncovering her nakedness is the only way back to yourself. No, the Bible's absolute when it comes to most things. It's why I don't believe in God.
Sometimes it's necessary to do wrong. Sometimes it's the only way to make things right. Any God who doesn't understand that can go fuck Himself.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain - that's five. — Hillary Jordan

Music is the one art we all have inside. We may not be able to play an instrument, but we can sing along or clap or tap our feet. Have you ever seen a baby bouncing up and down in the crib in time to some music? When you think of it, some of that baby's first messages from his or her parents may have been lullabies, or at least the music of their speaking voices. All of us have had the experience of hearing a tune from childhood and having that melody evoke a memory or a feeling. The music we hear early on tends to stay with us all our lives. — Fred Rogers

To the soul, memory is more important than planning, art more compelling than reason, and love more fulfilling than understanding. — Thomas Moore

My first memory is of light
the brightness of light
light all around. — Georgia O'Keeffe

Performance is there, and if you are not there in that moment it happened, it just stays in the memory. It's so immaterial and something this immaterial is very difficult to collect. Its difficult to buy, its how we can buy immaterial art. — Marina Abramovic

It true, Bigfoot career been in hole lately. Bigfoot mania of the '70's and '80's but distant memory. I famous for ability to not be see but don't think I not notice you not notice. I blame music television and internet. People too lazy and stupid to appreciate conceptual artist like Bigfoot who appeal is absence. — Graham Roumieu

Slow me down, Lord. Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations - of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to smile at a child, to read a few lines from a good book. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life's enduring values, that I may grow toward my greater destiny. Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upward to the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well. — Chip Ingram

Time is a lot of the things people say that God is. There's always preexisting, and having no end. There's the notion of being all powerful-because nothing can stand against time, can it? Not mountains, not armies. And time is, of course, all-healing. Give anything enough time, and everything is taken care of: all pain encompassed, all hardship erased, all loss subsumed. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Remember, man, that thou art dust; and unto dust thou shalt return.
And if time is anything akin to God, I suppose that memory must be the devil. — Diana Gabaldon

Inasmuch as art preserves, with the promise of happiness, the memory of the goal that failed, it can enter, as a 'regulative idea,' the desperate struggle for changing the world. Against all fetishism of the productive forces, against the continued enslavement of individuals by the objective conditions (which remain those of domination), art represents the ultimate goal of all revolutions: the freedom and happiness of the individual. — Herbert Marcuse

Heart as collapsed time, as a dug-up grave, as simple machine. Heart as big black bugs bleed blue blood. Heart as MI frozen as seen from airplane, everything still and white and beautiful. Heart as the Day the Music Died. Heart as love being made, as fucking, as a pleasantly haunted house. Heart as a dim memory of a dark room in which you're molded wetasscracked into a beanbag chair, fumbling for wetness. Come hither. Heart as a cunt's supposed to smell like tuna. Heart as the star of the sea. Heart as a pussy in permanent bloom. Heart as doxycycline. Heart as waxwings, as a fudge round, as the phone rings once and then stops. Heart as throw your hands in the air, throw your art at the stars, stutter and stare. Heart as a Stratocaster. Heart as Twin Reverb. Heart as I heart you so much. Heart as all that we thought we knew in the world disappears into vapor. Heart as the rest of your life times the weight of the world squared. — Bryan Charles

Art is a kind of artificial memory and the pain which attends all serious art is a sense of that factitiousness. — Iris Murdoch

But if what can exist does exist, is memory invention or is invention memory? — Jeanette Winterson

The brain is like a muscle, he said, and memory training is a form of mental workout. Over time, like any form of exercise, it'll make the brain fitter, quicker, and more nimble. It's an idea that dates back to the very origins of memory training. Roman orators argued that the art of memory - the proper retention and ordering of knowledge - was a vital instrument for the invention of new ideas. — Joshua Foer

... 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 didn't know if his art was helping. But Moses's pictures were like that, glorious and terrible. Glorious because they brought memory to life, terrible for the same reason.
Time softens memories, sanding down the rough edges of death.
But Moses's pictures dripped with life and reminded us of our loss. — Amy Harmon

If you follow the process of a thought - any thought, not just about art - the thought changes. It has to do with what you can hold in your memory and what you lose. That's an interesting thing to try to paint. — Ross Bleckner

Did you just use juxtaposition in a sentence?"
"Yes, Sage" he said patiently. "We use it all the time with art, ... That, and I know how to use a dictionary — Richelle Mead

Even the uncaptioned art photograph is invaded by language in the very moment it is looked at: in memory, in association, snatches of words and images continually intermingle and exchange one for the other. — Victor Burgin

Making art requires a degree of intentionality. All works of art require a contemplative individual drawing from their bank of knowledge and immersion into the realms of memory and imagination in order to make an outward, communicative expression. Only human beings can draw upon the dialectical tension between memory and imagination to create artistic renderings. — Kilroy J. Oldster

At first the analysing physician could do no more than discover the unconscious material that was concealed from the patient, put it together, and, at the right moment, communicate it to him. Psychoanalysis was then first and foremost an art of interpreting. Since this did not solve the therapeutic problem, a further aim quickly came in view: to oblige the patient to confirm the analyst's construction from his own memory. — Sigmund Freud

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art. — Benjamin Disraeli

To the memory of Vincent Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, El Greco, and many others who came before me as well as those who will come after. We are one. Thank you. — Luther E. Vann