Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. AudenRead
Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.
Interpretation
Great artistic expression arises from a deep understanding of complex emotions.
W. H. Auden's quote suggests that the essence of great art lies in the artist's ability to articulate their mixed feelings through clear and thoughtful expression. This clarity allows the artist to transform their emotional complexities into a creative form that resonates with others, highlighting the profound connection between emotional insight and artistic creation.
In practice
In a lecture about the creative process, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of emotional clarity in art.
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
Maybe directors who are more interested in realism and naturalism come from cities, where they see things on their doorstep every day. But growing up as a kid in a very pretty but ever-so-slightly boring town, where not a great deal happened, encouraged me to be more escapist, more imaginative, and more of a daydreamer.
The theatre is supremely fitted to say: 'Behold! These things are.' Yet most dramatists employ it to say: 'This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.'
She fell asleep, and it was a sleep as thin as the night clouds, dotted with dreams that came and went like the stars.
It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely.
If you've been fortunate enough to do a film that appeals to the entire family, that's the audience that's probably going to come back to you in something else.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.