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Quote by Lauren J.A. Bear

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Aphrodite in Pieces

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Lauren J.A. Bear

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“Only an idealist can be a cynic, for unless there is an ideal there is nothing to be cynical about. One does not paint a revolting image of a man and give it a cynical title unless one expects something better than degeneration in a man. Believing that, if God existed, He would have produced a better universe, Shelley took refuge in agnosticism. Yet the Christian holds that it was God who gave Shelley his notion of worth. One has yet to see an agnostic horse or a cynical cow. (From The Arts and the Christian Imagination : Essays on Art, Literature, and Aesthetics)”

“در مقطعی در تاریخ مدرن، به نظر عده ی زیادی چنین آمد که حافظه و سنت صرفا بارهایی اضافه هستند که باید زمینشان بگذاریم و خودمان را از شرّشان خلاص کنیم. آن فجایع اجتماعی که در این قرن بر سر نوع بشر آمد، مددکارش هنری بود که ستایشگر بی سابقگی، تغییر مداوم، بی مسئولیتی، و آوانگاردیسمی بود که همه ی سنت های پیشین را به سخره می گرفت و به مصرف کنندگان و تماشاچیان در گالری ها و در تئاترها پوزخند می زد، و از به حیرت انداختن خواننده به جای پاسخ دادن به سؤالاتی که جان خوانندگان را عذاب می دادند، به وجد می آمد. مهم نیست که رژیم های توتالیتری که در همین دوران به حاکمیت رسیدند ادبیات آوانگارد را منحط می دانستند و رد می کردند؛ مسئله ی اساسی این بود که آن ها هم همان نگاه تحقیرآمیز آوانگاردها را به سنت و ارزش های سنتی، به حافظه و خاطره ی اصیل نوع بشر داشتند، و بعد تلاش می کردند حافظه ای جعلی و ارزش هایی کاذب به ادبیات تحمیل کنند.”

“It had been a good day. Most days were - if you set the intention for goodness. Fen held intention in high esteem. That was the role of the artist, after all: to see the world not only as it was, but as it could be. An empty stage . . . could become a forest inhabited by nine-headed birds and wise goats able to tell truth from lies. A canvas could become a lake, moony with magic toads, or a sky tangled with dragons. Surely, a day was the same. A blank page to fill with whatever made the imagination buzz. So yes, she _could_ have taken today as simply another long stretch of aching hours giving tours to sticky-fingered schoolchildren with short-tempered teachers. But what was the fun in that? No - today, she had led small, growing minds through a labyrinth of sounds and sights. She had planted tiny pipe organs in their chests that would oompah-pah in their dreams.”

“It would have been easy to create the illustrations in this book on a computer -- to take a photo of an original artwork and edit Kitten in digitally. It was a greater challenge, and a whole lot more fun, to see if I could actually make pieces of art that looked like the originals in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and blend Kitten's headlong pursuit of the mouse into them. Everything you see Kitten encountering and exploring in this book was handmade, using acrylic and oil paints, gouache, ink, plaster, wood, gold leaf, clay, paper, glass, lead, and more. Some of the techniques I used were ones that I'd done before, and some were new to me. So yes, it could have been done digitally. And now, artificial intelligence even allows us to enter a description of what we want, and in seconds, the computer spits out an image. But where's the satisfaction in that? The computer created it, not us. If you like making things, practice. Practice makes better! It takes time to develop skills so things turn out the way you want them to; the way you see them in your imagination--you can't simply leap ahead and skip all that work. But it's fun to write stories and to make pictures and build things, and I hope you'll do these things because they're satisfying. Focus on the enjoyment you get while your skills are coming along. You can make pretty much anything you want to, if you teach yourself how. If people before us could do it, why not me? Why not you?”

“What is this thing called life? I believe That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life, Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo- Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow From a chemical reaction? I think they were here already, I think the rocks And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies have their various consciousness, all things are conscious; But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire: It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness, As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all, Like the cells of a man's body making one being, They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”