kyleschen

A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard — by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off.

The challenge of communication isn’t to never miscommunicate, it’s to cut down the time between the interaction and the realization that the communication didn’t get through. Because the sooner we know we’re not connecting, the sooner we can fix it.

There is no best jazz performance. That’s why it’s interesting.

Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important—what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right—so long as it’s not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic—and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don’t know. I’ve never known it. I’d like to understand.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.

When you start a painting, it is somewhat outside you. At the conclusion, you seem to move inside the painting.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy if my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.