Some quotes I posted on a previous incarnation of this blog.

Concrete Jungle

“The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.”

— Desmond Morris — “The Human Zoo”, 1969

Doubt

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

— Robert Hughes — from Art Quotes

Copyright

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

— Woody Guthrie — found here

Critics

“I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.”

— Jean Michel Basquiat —

Eternity

“Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity.”

— Paul Gauguin — from Art Quotes

Fag-Hags

From this article on the Music Institute glory days, 313 Detroit techno mailinglist:

“A no-liquor (pop and juice only) policy kept the (Music Institute) open without incident to all comers. The older kids, the Cass Tech and Renaissance high school kids, the gay crowd and girls girls girls. All in one house; pre-rave, pre-drugs. One strobe light and House Music All Night Long.”

“(…) in those days, the only white faces in the crowd would be the more-adventurous House-loving gay kids and their fag-hags.”

— Alan D. Oldham — 1997

Not Doing It

“The most exciting thing is not doing it. If you fall in love with someone and never do it, it’s much more exciting.”

— Andy Warhol —

One Look

“After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ‘I want to see the manager’.”

— William S. Burroughs —

Prayers

“I have had prayers answered… most strangely so sometimes… but I think our heavenly Father’s loving-kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.”

— Lewis Carroll — from Art Quotes

Anti-Sensitivity

“What interests me is to paint the kind of anti-sensitivity that impregnates modern civilization.”

— Roy Lichtenstein — from Art Quotes

Nausea

“There is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts. They know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves. They race, they press forward, they strike me a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I would like to hold them back, but I know if I succeeded in stopping one it would remain between my fingers only as a raffish languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even will it: I know few impressions. Stronger or more harsh.”

— J.P. Sartre — “Nausea”, from Lumpenproletariat

Second Wave Society

“The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.”

— Alvin Toffler —

Real Life

“Precisely because the universe in which we live is somehow a universe of dead conventions and artificiality, the only authentic real experience must be some extremely violent, shattering experience. And this we experience as a sense that now we are back in real life.”

— Slavoj Zizek — from www.cut-up.com

Truth

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

— Oscar Wilde —

Warm Heart

“An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.”

— Vincent van Gogh — from Art Quotes