Staring Quotes - Page 35

• And I would often wake up at night and stare widely into the room: Am I in Hell?

  Edvard Munch

  Night, Wake Up, Rooms

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• I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted.

  Jean Cocteau

  Girl, Mother, Teacher

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• Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility. You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don't know anything.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Insecurity, Canvas, Blank

  Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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• The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality... could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it.

  John Berger

  Reality, Finishing, Impossible

  John Berger (2014). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.158, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Eye, Individuality, Deny

  Ingmar Bergman (1956). “The seventh seal: a film”

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• We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, Looks, Use

  Northrop Frye (1964). “The Educated Imagination”, p.56, Indiana University Press

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• It is said that my art has some typically Nordic features: the curving lines, the convolutions, the magical masks and staring eyes that appear in myths and folk art. This may be. My interest in the dynamics of Jugend style probably also comes into it.

  Asger Jorn

  Art, Eye, Style

  Asger Jorn, Per Hovdenakk, Stine Høholt, Arken museum for moderne kunst (Ishøj, Denmark), Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst (Amstelveen, Netherlands) (2002). “Asger Jorn”

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• When the people stare at the sky and dream of blessedness, or when they quiver with fear for hell after death, their eyes get blinded so they can't see their own right of primogeniture.

  Gerrard Winstanley

  Dream, Eye, Sky

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• No one would have the courage to walk up to a writer and ask to look at the last few pages of his manuscript, but they feel perfectly comfortable staring over an artist's shoulder while he is trying to paint.

  Robert Genn

  Artist, Trying, Looks

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• If you stare at an object, as you do when you paint, there is no point at which you stop learning things from it.

  Wayne Thiebaud

  Paint, Objects, No Point

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• When everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground.

  Emily Dickinson

  Fall, Autumn, Space

  Emily Dickinson, Helen Vendler (2010). “Dickinson”, p.154, Harvard University Press

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• If I was talking to someone face-to-face I would always be clear, but with something like Snapchat, you need to keep the flirty banter going;otherwise you'll be staring at an empty red arrow, cringing.

  Holly Carpenter

  Flirty, Arrows, Talking

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• There are faint stars in the night sky that you can see, but only if you look to the side of where they shine. They burn too weakly or are too far away to be seen directly, even if you stare. But you can see them out of the corner of your eye because the cells on the periphery of your retina are more sensitive to light. Maybe truth is just like that. You can see it, but only out of the corner of your eye.

  Janna Levin

  Stars, Eye, Night

  Janna Levin (2009). “A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines”, p.12, Anchor

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• Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to the desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.

  Jeff MacNelly

  Writing, Simple, Typewriters

  "Fictional character: Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk". "Shoe" by Jeff MacNelly, 1977-2000.

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• Costumes are fun. Dress up like a pilot some night and watch as people stare!

  Tim Heidecker

  Fun, Night, People

  "Style profile: Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim". Los Angeles Times Interview, latimesblogs.latimes.com. December 1, 2007.

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• I lay in my bed night after night staring at the ceiling and thinking, Why have I survived the war? Why was I the last person in my immediate family to be alive? I didn’t know.

  Ishmael Beah

  War, Night, Thinking

  Ishmael Beah (2007). “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier”, p.179, Macmillan

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• Watching people is a good hobby, but you have to be careful about it. You can’t let people catch you staring at them. If people catch you, they treat you like a first-class criminal. And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe it should be a crime to try to see things about people they don’t want you to see.

  Carol Rifka Brunt

  Class, People, Trying

  Carol Rifka Brunt (2012). “Tell the Wolves I'm Home”, p.4, Pan Macmillan

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• STARING INTO THE ABYSS by Richard Thomas is an outstanding book, a grim tapestry of broken lives and shattered dreams, of dark fantasies and dark reflections. It's one of the better single-author collections I've had the pleasure to read in recent years, and as such, gets my highest recommendation. It's also a fine testament to a talent I suspect we are going to be hearing a lot more from, and soon.

  Kealan Patrick Burke

  Dream, Book, Dark

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• There are some closed doors we’re so frightened of opening that we don’t see them any more. We’ve pushed furniture in front of them; we’ve jammed the lock. Children are the only ones who might crouch down on all fours to stare at the red glow coming from under the door, as they wonder what lies behind it. But Vango had always been afraid of the glow.

  Timothee de Fombelle

  Children, Lying, Doors

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• Anytime you walk onto a stage or something where there's lots of people staring at you, you need to have something inspiring inside your head. Bolstering.

  Kristin Bauer van Straten

  People, Needs, Stage

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We wish we were Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vader in all of us. Thing is, this ain't no either or proposition. We're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. You can run but you can't hide. My experience? Face the darkness, stare it down. Own it. As brother Nietzsche said, being human is a complicated gig. Give that old dark night of the soul a hug! Howl the eternal yes!

  Stuart Stevens

  Running, Brother, Dark

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• Joy, grief, desire or fear, whate'er the name The passion bears, its influence is the same; Where things exceed your hope or fall below, You stare, look blank, grow numb from top to toe.

  Horace

  Fall, Grief, Passion

  Horace (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Horace (Illustrated)”, p.364, Delphi Classics

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• The mandalas were meant to be objects of contemplation, aids to meditation, their proportions magically balanced to purify and calm the mind. To stare at a mandala was to experience, if only briefly, the nothingness that is at the heart of enlightenment.

  Douglas Preston

  Heart, Meditation, Mind

  Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child (2010). “The Wheel of Darkness: An Agent Pendergast Novel”, p.124, Hachette UK

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• New York is where it is going to begin, I think. You can see it coming. The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We're nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high noon in the middle of New York. But this time they won't snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each others

  John D. MacDonald

  New York, Thinking, Two

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• A film star is a kind of public monument, and everyone's staring at them, and they've kind of got railings around them, and they're rather miserable most of the time.

  Stephen Fry

  Stars, Kind, Film

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. September 22, 2004.

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