A Quote by Joseph Epstein
High standards generally -- about workmanship and creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art and much else -- far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life.
Related Quotes
How our governments need standards of integrity! How our communities need yardsticks to measure decency! How our neighborhoods need models of beauty and cleanliness! How our schools need continued encouragement and assistance to maintain high educational standards! Rather than spend time complaining about the direction in which these institutions are going, we need to exert our influence in shaping the right direction. A small effort by a few can result in so much good for all of mankind.
Politics is a part of life and art is about life. It doesn't mean that all the art has to be about politics - in fact, heaven forbid. But politics is a totally legitimate area of focus for any art, whether it's painting or songwriting or anything else, as much as sex is, as much as spirituality is, as much as any other behavior of people is.
Art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. It's about reasserting our firsthand experience in present time.
It's kind of not about the quality of the art, as much as this is what I love doing and I'd have a worse time doing anything else. That's kind of as far as I think in terms of philosophy.
Sometimes a scene may be about one thing, and it may end up still being about that, but the emotionality of it comes from somewhere else, or the humor of it comes from somewhere else, and it gives it that real-life quality.
I didn't really think about becoming a professional artist until high school, when I realized that everything else required too much math.
Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences... That solves a lot of problems ... Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen ... [W]hat makes a work of art 'good' for you is not something that is already 'inside' it, but something that happens inside you.
Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it’s so wonderfully fair.
I have generally not responded to sexism if it's about me. And I have responded if it's about somebody else, because if women in general are being degraded, are being dismissed, then I can respond in a way that demonstrates I'm not taking it personally but I'm really serious about rejecting that kind of behavior.
I'm a writer who doesn't much think about money because money doesn't really care about me. In other nations, art gets subsidized. Writers aren't wealthy by any means, but there's the idea that the state supports the creation of art.
I like to refer to my small social circle as 'boutique.' And much like the hotels of the same ilk, my friends are all unique, high quality, and serve me good food. But more than that, they teach me things about the world and about myself that I couldn't learn anywhere else.
Being authentic can be a good thing in that often people who are fixated on that are also fixated on having very high standards, so they may maintain something they think has tremendous value. On the other hand, most of the kinds of music that I've been excited about are hybrid in their origins.
Let us be about setting high standards for life, love, creativity, and wisdom. If our expectations in these areas are low, we are not likely to experience wellness. Setting high standards makes every day and every decade worth looking forward to.
There's almost a Rorschach-test quality about writing about 'Playboy'. What comes out in the press is not so much about me as it is about society.
Rarely do schools acknowledge the power of peer culture in defining standards, and rarely do they take advantage of this power as an engine for quality. When students themselves are in charge of projects that they care about, peer pressure can become a powerful force for high standards.
Generally, the biopics are made on the personalities about whom much is not known. But if someone who is already popular and everyone knows about his life then I don't see a point in making a biopic on his life unless you are telling something new about that person.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer