There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
Dorothy ParkerRead
Authors and actors and artists and such - Never know nothing, and never know much.
Interpretation
Creative individuals often feel inadequate in their knowledge and skills, regardless of their talents.
This quote by Dorothy Parker reflects the sentiment that those in creative fields, such as authors, actors, and artists, often grapple with a sense of doubt regarding their expertise. Despite their accomplishments, they may feel they lack the complete understanding or mastery that society expects, which can create ongoing insecurities about their work and abilities.
In practice
In a discussion about the creative process, this quote could illustrate the uncertainty that artists face.
There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
My land is bare of chattering folk; / the clouds are low along the ridges, / and sweet's the air with curly smoke / from all my burning bridges.
Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell.
They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.
It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
I canβt write five words but that I change seven.
But now it's just another show, you leave em laughing when you go. And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.
The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.
My dad would go to work every day and write in a room full of funny people. He enjoyed it. I know great writers who find the process agonising but to me, writing has always been sheer joy.
She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.
As an artist, you make music. And if you see people who don't know how to market your music, you get involved in it. Otherwise, what you want to accomplish 'gets lost in translation' - no pun intended.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
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