There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.
Salvador DaliRead
The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments
Interpretation
Art is driven by the human instinct to survive and the inherent fear of death.
In this quote, Salvador Dali suggests that the fundamental emotions surrounding life and mortality are deeply intertwined with artistic expression. The desire to cling to life and the anxiety about our inevitable end fuel creativity, inspiring artists to explore themes of existence, beauty, and the human condition through their work.
In practice
This quote would be fitting in a discussion about the psychological influences on art.
There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.
Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health. However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?" Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches.
Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life, let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating, on condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul - let my unformed childhood soul, as it ages, assume the rational and esthetic forms of an architecture, let me learn just everything that others cannot teach me, what only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin!
The problem with the youth of today' is that one is no longer part of it.
You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life
All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.
Ironic philosophies produce passionate works.
So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once.
Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
I have always wished I could learn to be a potter. I love collecting ceramics; it would be so fulfilling to create something lovely.
Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.
What counts in a good story is the person inside. Keep it simple.
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