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Lewis Hyde

Lewis Hyde Quotes

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Famous Lewis Hyde Quotes

“Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing.”

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Author:Lewis Hyde
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“An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.”

MadeArtistCreationEssentialsCreatingLaborMade ItPortionsBowlsBeggingSupplicationInvocation
Book:The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
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“All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity.”

ThinkingWorldShouldMindWellsMayStatesArtistCommunityCreativityTraditionScientistLuckStudiosFacultyStand AloneMoney PowerPower Politics
Book:Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership
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“For the slow labor of realizing a potential gift the artist must retreat to those Bohemias, halfway between the slums and the library, where life is not counted by the clock and where the talented may be sure they will be ignored until that time, if it ever comes, when their gifts are viable enough to be set free and survive in the world.”

IfsWorldMayEnoughLife IsArtistRealizingLaborLibraryClockIgnoredRetreatHalfwaySlumsBohemia
Book:The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
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