A Quote by Guy Davenport

Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its maker's attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why they are infinitely rewarding.

Guy Davenport

Quote Topics

Art Attention Demanding Exhausted Fails Great Infinitely Maker Rewarding Significance Unless Wholly Why Work Works

Quote Author

Guy Davenport
American - Writer
November 23, 1927 - January 4, 2005

Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its makers attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why they are infinitely rewarding.

Guy Davenport

The fun for me musically is that you never quite know what works and why. So why pretend you do? Why not just put things together and discover, in the creative process, if and why they work? That approach has served me well.

Thomas Newman

There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.

Iris Murdoch

I want to know why people are getting laughs. Why this joke works and why that one didn't work. It all comes back to helping me be a better WWE Superstar. So I love it.

Dolph Ziggler

I think the story is important in every business. Why do you exist, why are you here, why is your product different, why should I pay attention, why should I care?

Jason Fried

Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity. The majority spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another, or why one picture works and another doesn't.

Charles Saatchi

Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.

Kurt Vonnegut

I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?

Gunther Schuller

Art begs you to notice it. Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello. So pay attention to poetry. Pay attention to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays. Don't let all this go unnoticed. Your world is shouting out to you, revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself. Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves life.

Neale Donald Walsch

If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, what doubts should we have concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Young readers are the most challenging, demanding, and rewarding of audiences. Adults often ask why I write for the younger set. My reply: 'I can't think of anyone I'd rather write for.'

Karen Hesse

When you die and go to heaven our maker is not going to ask, 'why didn't you discover the cure for such and such? why didn't you become the Messiah?' The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is 'why didn't you become you?'

Elie Wiesel

If history were a photograph of the past it would be flat and uninspiring. Happily, it is a painting; and, like all works of art, it fails of the highest truth unless imagination and ideas are mixed with the paints.

Allan Nevins

Mr. Christ, I read you as an infinitely patient entity who, as they say, often works in mysterious ways, a rebel unafraid to take the tougher, less traveled paths. Seems to me you're playing the long game. Is that why more states are coming out in favor of marriage equality? Is that why the Affordable Care Act is now with us?

Henry Rollins

Just as our historical beginnings are utterly mysterious-why are we born? why when and as we are?-so too are the beginnings of works of art and of "artists.