A Quote by John Updike

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

John Updike

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Art Space Breathing Certain Offers Room Spirit

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John Updike
American - Novelist
March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

John Updike

There has to be space for play in literature. We all need some breathing room.

Lydia Millet

Prayer is spiritual breathing; when we pray we breathe in the Holy Spirit; praying in the Holy Spirit (Jd. 1:20). Thus, all church prayers are the breathing of the Holy Spirit; as it were spiritual air and also light, spiritual fire, spiritual food and spiritual raiment.

John of Kronstadt

In the future, I will make certain that I commit to projects so there's enough breathing space for me to have an emotional life.

Twyla Tharp

Right mindfulness does not simply mean being aware; it is like creating a work of art. You can therefore trust what you are doing; you are not threatened by anything. You have room to dance in the space, and this makes it a creative situation. The space is open to you.

Chogyam Trungpa

Breathing is the first act of life and the last. Our very life depends on it. Since we cannot live without breathing it is tragically deplorable to contemplate the millions and millions who have never mastered the art of correct breathing.

Joseph Pilates

Art for me is like breathing. When I stop breathing, what happens?

Yoko Ono

Breathing is meditation; life is a meditation. You have to breathe in order to live, so breathing is how you get in touch with the sacred space of your heart.

Willow Smith

Respect is that great spirit of good, which creates the beautiful space giving all souls the simple room to breathe.

Bryant H. McGill

Old art offers just as good a criticism of new art as new art offers of old.

Jasper Johns

We didn't have an awful lot of space. There were six of us born within the space of seven or eight years - I was third. I remember sharing a room with one or other of my brothers - at one point we had three single beds in one room.

Ardal O'Hanlon

It is foolish to claim, as some do, that emigration into space offers a long-term escape from Earth's problems. Nowhere in our solar system offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic or the top of Everest.

Martin Rees

Drawing creates its own kind of private space. Coupled with certain interests that I want to speak to in my art, it's really kind of a safe haven for me. Creating art is not only a comfort zone, but also a way of speaking to my passions.

Jerry Pinkney

I think in space or music or art or literature of any kind there has to be some kind of void where the viewer or the spectator or the listener or the reader can insert themselves into it, and there is a certain kind of architectural space which is totalitarian, which does not allow you to do that.

Jonathan Meades

Why is there space rather than no space? Why is space three-dimensional? Why is space big? We have a lot of room to move around in. How come it's not tiny? We have no consensus about these things. We're still exploring them.

Leonard Susskind

I was asked in 1969 by Lucy Lippard to define art. I think at the time I said that art was a matter of life and death, meaning just the breathing and living and thinking experience-that's what art is.

Tony Shafrazi

A Quote by John Updike

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