
“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.”
“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.”
Interview with Christian Salmon (Fall 1983), Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Series Seven [Viking, 1988, ], pp. 217-218
Context: Do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
Referring to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in a speech in Hartford, Connecticut (25 February 1956)
Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 260, "What's New: Ritual Revolution"
Quote from The Quotable Artist, by Peggy Hadden; Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2010; not paged
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