David Antin Quotes

Quotes about:

• From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.

  David Antin

  May, Entertainment, Language

  45 Copy quote

• The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.

  David Antin

  Running, Past, Self

  8 Copy quote

• The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

  David Antin

  Memories, Anxiety, Greek

  "A Conversation with David Antin". Book by David Antin, Charles Bernstein, 2002.

  17 Copy quote

• I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.

  David Antin

  Writing, Thinking, Writing Poems

  5 Copy quote

• I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.

  David Antin

  Together, Kind, Process

  16 Copy quote

• I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

  David Antin

  Fundamentals, Pursuit, Theory

  11 Copy quote

• I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.

  David Antin

  Sacred, Casual, Secular

  9 Copy quote

• I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.

  David Antin

  Giving Up, Understanding, Trying

  8 Copy quote

• My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it.

  David Antin

  Ideas, Rejection, Entertainment

  7 Copy quote

• An art machine is a system
  whose parts when put in motion
  act upon each other in such a way
  as to cause you to see things differently

  David Antin

  Art, Machines, Way

  David Antin, John Cage (2005). “John Cage Uncaged Is Still Cagey”

  5 Copy quote

• I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.

  David Antin

  Strong, Feelings, Liberty

  4 Copy quote

• I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out.

  David Antin

  Dog, Giving, Stories

  8 Copy quote

• My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.

  David Antin

  Thinking, Way, Path

  7 Copy quote

• There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

  David Antin

  Editing, Jazz Improvisation, Procedures

  8 Copy quote

• When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.

  David Antin

  Growing Up, Fluency, Language

  66 Copy quote

• The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

  David Antin

  Pieces, World, Entertainment

  8 Copy quote

• I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.

  David Antin

  Believe, Thinking, Focus

  7 Copy quote

• While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.

  David Antin

  Thinking, Giving, Use

  52 Copy quote

• I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.

  David Antin

  Thinking, Newton, James Watt

  52 Copy quote

• It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

  David Antin

  Character, Mouths, Novel

  7 Copy quote

• A myth is the name of a terrible lie told by a smelly little brown person to a man in a white suit with a pair of binoculars.

  David Antin

  Lying, Men, White

  David Antin (1976). “Talking at the boundaries”, W W Norton & Co Inc

  8 Copy quote

• Disney made a fortune out of inventing the businessman's idea of the imaginary as the contradictory of the businessman's idea of the real.

  David Antin

  Real, Ideas, Made

  7 Copy quote

• Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.

  David Antin

  Meaningful, Children, Sight

  7 Copy quote

• I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.

  David Antin

  Long, Format, Prose

  4 Copy quote

• I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know.

  David Antin

  Kids, College, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

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