That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while awake. He said the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said, was a controlled madness… He said books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the unique human ability to dream and imagine while awake, highlighting the transformative power of books and art.
In this quote, Steven Millhauser illustrates the fundamental distinction between humans and animals, centering it on our capacity for conscious dreaming and imagination. He argues that books serve not just as sources of knowledge, but as vehicles for creative thinking, allowing readers to visualize and connect deeply with the ideas presented, akin to controlled chaos or madness found in art, which alters our perception of reality.
In practice
In a book club discussion to highlight the importance of literature in understanding art.
I think of childhood as an explosion of creativity. For most people, growing up and earning a living means leaving all that behind. But an artist never leaves that behind. Edwin Mullhouse was my way of exploring the child as artist and, under the guise of childhood, something larger.
Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate for our dreams.
Music is always a commentary on society.
But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.
An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie.
To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.
There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist-musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn... No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely
He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.
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