One should aim, seriously, at disregarding ups and downs; a compliment here, silence there ... the central fact remains stable, which is the fact of my own pleasure in the art.
The central benefit of Zen, in the context of ordinary ups and downs of life,is not in preventing the minus and promoting the plus,but in directing people to the fundamental reality that is not under the sway of ups and downs.
As much as Travis and I may have not agreed in the past on a lot of things and we had our own public ups and downs, we've always shared the fact that our children are our first priority.
I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair.
I feel oddly at peace with the ups and downs of pandemic life. They're not too different from the ups and downs of deployment life, which I've experienced a lot the last few years as my husband, an Army Special Forces officer, has been overseas.
There have been many ups and downs but when you get that one push, it is amazing. When you go ahead in spite of some people trying to pull you back, that feeling has its own pleasure.
There have been ups and downs, but it has taught us a lot in life. Going with the team through those ups and downs is a terrific journey.
Once you find someone to share your ups and downs, downs are almost as good as ups.
In general, a fact is worth more than theories in the long run. The theory stimulates, but the fact builds. The former in due time is replaced by one better but the fact remains and becomes fertile.
We should all live in central or southwest Queensland in Australia, which is geologically stable. Or Kansas or Nebraska, because it's relatively geologically stable. I am sure there is no emergency plan for Topeka.
There were some ups and downs. But it is about how you overcome those ups and downs.
For it is a plain fact that, most certainly in the West, the writings, works of art, musical compositions which are of central reference, comport that which is "grave and constant" (Joyce's epithets) in the mystery of our condition.
Research is about following the gleam into the dark. It's also about being sensitive enough to know which fact is "the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders," as opposed to the fact that deadens and kills a delicate new project.
You have to be willing to deal with the ups and downs of the music, the ups and downs of the audience.
The ups and downs of this cosmos may sometimes be acknowledged to be metaphorical ups and downs, but until about Newton's time most people took the "up" of heaven and the "down" of hell to be more or less descriptive.
My dad was one of the original members of the Groundlings, and I watched him as an actor have ups and downs, and I watched my mom as a casting director have ups and downs.
My father's violence is the central fact of my art and my life.