A Quote by John Cheever
Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.
Related Quotes
Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can accomplish this only by the most vigilant exercise of choice, but in a world that changes more swiftly that we can perceive there is always the danger that our powers of selection will be mistaken and that the vision we serve will come to nothing.
Art is the triumph over chaos.
I write some art criticism, and one thing that's clear to me is that politics is fashionable in the American art world in a way it maybe isn't in American fiction. Your work of art becomes fashionable the moment it has some kind of political commentary. I think this has its dangers - the equation between fashion, politics, and art is problematic for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, the notion of politics as being de rigueur in the world of fiction is almost unthinkable. In fiction in America at the moment, the escape into whimsy is far more prevalent than the political.
I'd say art is with you. All around you. I'd say when there doesn't seem to be anyone else, there is art. I'd say you can love art how you wish to be loved. And I'd say art is a lifeline to the rest of us - we are out here. You are not alone. There is nothing about you that scares us. There is nothing unlovable about you, either.
I'm not really well educated - other than an art survey course at the High School of Art and Design in New York when I was, like, 15. I don't know the history of art, but I got over intimidation from the art world when I realized that I was allowed to feel whatever I want and like whatever I want.
There's an expression, "God is in the details," and it applies to nothing more than it does to the writing of fiction. To that and to the art of telling good lies. And what is fiction but the telling of lies?
If the art of poetry is?the art of making sense of the chaos of human experience, it's not a bad thing to see a lot of chaos.
Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake", there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.
The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can vanquish lies! ... Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art.
I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.
The power of both myth and art is this magical ability to open doors, to make connections - not only between us and the natural world, but between us and the rest of humanity. Myths show us what we have in common with every other human being, no matter what culture we come from, no matter what century we live in. . .and at the same time, mythic stories and art celebrate our essential differences.
It seems like the big difference between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love, with having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.
Our time and attention is scarce. Art is not that important to us, no matter what we might like to believe... Our love of art is often quite temporary, dependent upon our moods, and our love of art is subservient to our demand for a positive self image. How we look at art should account for those imperfections and work around them. Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader. Maybe we think we are supposed to like tough books, but are we? Who says? Many writers (and art museums) produce for quite a small subsample of the... public.
Art is personal, originating from dreams, ideas, neuroses; art is shared, harkening back to the humans around the fire; art imbues pleasure and power by enabling people to know reality...Art is a necessity because it is a way of knowing...Is the need for truth physiological? Art exists out of time...images may be different bu there is always a repetition- a thread.
Whatever happens to the art world, art will go on regardless. As for obscurity, it looms just over the horizon beckoning us all. Why worry.
I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense, but not irrational, nor naïve - because art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
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