H. Givens

“It was soon painfully clear that when he looked at me what he mainly saw was a cute animal, clownish and a little stupid, something like a very small dog with buckteeth. He had no inkling of my true character, that I was in fact grossly cynical, moderately vicious, and a melancholy genius, or that I had read more books than he had.”
― Sam Savage, Firmin

“Everybody works according to his ability, some doing more, some doing less, but everyone ought to know whether he is doing good or harm. Artists are not released from that obligation, especially as there are no works of art which do neither harm nor good. If a book, a picture or a melody is accepted by a reader, a spectator or a listener, it means that the reader, spectator or listener has had his emotions stirred; and emotions must be either harmful or useful. They cannot be neutral.”
― Sergei Obraztsov, My Profession

“THE LORD. You've nothing more to say to me? You come but to complain unendingly? Is never aught right to your mind?
MEPHISTOPHELES. No, Lord! All is still downright bad, I find.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“Puppets do not have thoughts, they are more like our thoughts, images of our thoughts, as if our minds were populated with remnants of the older, more cliched stories that we manipulate and that manipulate us.”
― Kenneth Gross, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life