Kelly > Kelly's Quotes

“I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary. I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.”
― Claes Oldenburg

“ I used myself, let nothing use me.
Like being on a private dole,

sometimes more like cutting bricks in Egypt.
What life there was, was mine,

now and again to lay
one hand on a warm brick

and touch the sun's ghost
with economical joy.”
― Adrienne Rich

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynmann

“You don’t sound like a scientist, you sound like a poet.”

Rey smiled, “Can I be both?”

But you’d rather be a poet.”

Who wouldn’t?” he said.”
― Daniel Alarcon

“Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that's dynamic and expressivee--that's what's good for you if you're at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.”
― Tennessee Williams

“All colors made me happy: even gray.
My eyes were such that literally they
Took photographs. ”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
― E.B. White

“Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.”
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.”
― Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life

“There is a vast asymmetry in the dynamic here that Billy can’t quite put his finger on, even though it’s the elephant shitting all over the room.”
― Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“A man is fearful of lonely in a woman”
― Joyce Carol Oates, A Book of American Martyrs