“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.”
Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Variant: Art is a house that tries to be haunted.
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Skinny Legs and All (1990)
“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.”
Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Variant: Art is a house that tries to be haunted.
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“In the oldest, bunched houses with tottering stairs”
Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist
St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)
“If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,”
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
"Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: p> If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghostOr Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolnessA vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.</p
“Art doesn't always mirror life and life's hard sometimes.”
Ben Kowalewicz (1975) musician
From "The Diary of Billy Talent":
“A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted.”
Hope Mirrlees book Lud-in-the-Mist
Source: Lud-in-the-Mist
“Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
“Insomniacs know better than anyone how it would be to haunt a house.”
Michael Cunningham book By Nightfall
Source: By Nightfall
Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) English poet
The Dark Angel (1895)
“I don't know why people expect art to make sense. Life doesn't make sense.”
David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor