Christina’s Reviews > The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing > Status Update

'Reality shows are the most prevalent and brutal evidence of the sustaining, unrelenting power of stereotype and how people are so willing to act that stereotype out.'

'Barbara Kruger: ...No work, no painting, no novel, no movie is as brilliant and masterful or as failed and minor as it's thought to be. Things get pumped up, and that has to do with our value systems.'

Twyla Tharp: "Editing means, how much objectivity do you have really? How much can you disassociate from your own bias? How much can you disassociate yourself from the wish fulfillment component that is involved in work of all sorts? You've got to become not you."

'As I moved between artists, I heard this sentiment over and over—deep down, you had to believe you could make the work that eluded you, otherwise you couldn't work.'

"You always have a better book in mind than you're able to write. And one of the things you have to be able to do, if you're going to write novels, is survive that discrepancy between the book you were able to write and the better book you imagined."

'Whether you feel trapped or empowered by the recurrence of themes you're fated to noodle over endlessly seems to vary widely by artist.'

'The true value of unbaked scrawls and sketches and whatnot is as a window to an artist's process. Process is an ugly-sounding word—pedestrian jargon for the inherently wondrous act of creation—but it describes a method by which a thing evolves, which has always had a hold on me. ... As an editor and as a reader, I found the story of how creators create irresistible.'