Surface Ornamentation Quotes & Sayings

There is no irritant as painful as an ace up your sleeve that you can never use; it's the kind of thing that causes oysters to produce pearls. — Sheila Ballantyne

I went to college and studied writing, and I got involved in theater. It's always been my passion. — Raymond Cruz

Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one. — Dan Bern

I wonder, only in passing, whether the indelible ornamentation that man inscribes upon his own epidermis does not respond to a nostalgia for the universal internally generated coloring of corrollas, furs, shells, carapaces and wings. For man it has been necessary to create both works and tools outside of himself. But it may be that he retains an obscure nostalgia to create them on his own body, to make them a part of it rather than projecting them outwards onto an independent surface, where he is free to retouch them as he sees fit, which is precisely what painting and art are. — Roger Caillois

In every moment of the day, in the middle of any day, I can become newly engaged with the world. Newly competent. There's so much to discover! I can still become something I am not. — Sharman Apt Russell

I was recently told, 'You're a liar!' when I said to somebody I walked down the spine of the Andes. Every Spaniard in the sixteenth, seventeenth century did that. The idea that somebody could just walk! He can jog perhaps in the morning, but he can't walk anywhere! The world has become inaccessible because we drive there. — Ivan Illich

The M.F.A. is a degree in servitude. It is a way to keep writing safe - to keep reading safe from writing. — Joshua Cohen

I think I can deal with these rules."
"You better, because there is a punishment for breaking the rules."
"And what kind of puinshment would that be?"
He chuckled. "Probably the sort of puinshment you'd enjoy. — Jennifer L. Armentrout