The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small 'yes' at the center of a vast 'no.'
Interpretation
Creating art is a positive affirmation in a world often filled with negativity.
Gore Vidal's quote highlights the act of creation, whether it be in art or in love, as a significant gesture of affirmation and positivity amidst the overwhelming negativity that might surround us. It suggests that in a world that often says 'no' to many endeavors, the act of producing art or expressing love stands out as a meaningful and productive acknowledgment of existence.
In practice
This quote can be shared during an art exhibit opening to inspire artists.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.
A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
Only since the turn of the century has abstraction again become recognized as an artistic means of representation. It was then that one returned to the recognition of the immense role abstraction plays in the human mind by its power of concentration upon absolute essentials.
I tell myself that I created the wardrobe of the contemporary woman, that I participated in the transformation of my times.
The music comes through me, and I let it come the way it comes, and it shapes itself. I just hold space for it. I don't intend to write it for a purpose, but it comes as it comes and am proud of the way it can support change because I believe strongly in what I sing about.
If gaming were seen as an art, the important question would be not whether games are good for us but whether they are good, full stop.
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