Amy

“The lead from her pencil covers her fingers, her knuckles. She rubs out as many words as she writes. Her words always on the verge of being erased. Words written on top of words. Words crossed out. Many of her words are missing. They have been lifted off the pages and rubbed onto her skin. The words that do remain carry her skin with them.”
― Doug Rice, Between Appear and Disappear

“Nov. 2, 1837. Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Structuralists, formalists, linguistic philosophers who tell us that works of art are like trees-simply objects for perception-all avoid on principle the humanistic questions: who will this work of art help? what baby is it squashing? The business of criticism has become definition, morality reduced to the positivist ideal of clarity. The trouble is that clarity on the wrong subject can be dangerously misleading, as when we define Count Fosco's crocodile as a smiling animal weighing four hundred pounds.”
― John Gardner, On Moral Fiction

“True art, by specific technical means now commonly forgotten, clarifies life, establishes models of human action, casts nets toward the future, carefully judges our right and wrong directions, celebrates and mourns. It does not rant. It does not sneer or giggle in the face of death, it invents prayers and weapons. It designs visions worth trying to make fact. It does not whimper or cower or throw up its hands and bat its lashes. It does not make hope contingent on acceptance of some religious theory. It strikes like lightening, or is lightning; whichever.”
― John Gardner, On Moral Fiction