Either you're growing or you're decaying; there's no middle ground. If you're standing still, you're decaying.
Alan ArkinRead
I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?
Interpretation
Artistic expression should not be judged through competition, as it is subjective.
In this quote, Alan Arkin emphasizes the absurdity of comparing artists to determine who is better. He suggests that the value of art is inherently subjective and that each artist brings their unique perspective and creativity, making competitions irrelevant and unjustifiable.
In practice
During an art seminar discussing the value of personal expression.
Either you're growing or you're decaying; there's no middle ground. If you're standing still, you're decaying.
I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did
If you want to be an actor and you love acting, you can do it whether you're doing something else or not. You can be connected with community theater or make your own little movies. But if you want to be a movie star, you've got a tough road ahead of you.
Everybody's career has ups and downs. I like to take chances; I don't like to stand still. And I don't give a damn what the market is interested in; I want to try things.
Every physicist knows that things connect with each other. To isolate things is not the way the universe works - winning best actor is arbitrary.
I love working if it's with people who are capable of having a good time. People with a little bit of enjoyment of what they do. If it's enormous pressure, and people feel that their lives are at stake, then it's agony. So I try to pick projects where I feel like I'm going to avoid those traps.
Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.
I wrote my first novel and my second novel in Chicago. It was the place where I became a writer. It's my favorite city.
The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal through the senses with abstractions.
I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'
I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.
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