Quotes about ink
page 2

“"A curse," said Lee. "Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain: 'homosexual'. I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion- just a minute, Doctore Kildare, this isn't your script. I might as well have destroyed myself, ending an existence which seemed to offer nothing but grotesque misery and humiliation. Nobler, I thought to die a man than life on, a sex monster. It was a wise old queen - Bob, we called her- who taught me that I had a duty to live and to bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink."”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Source: Queer: A Novel (1985), Chapter Three

Love, Life, Hate, Hostility

“I am most comfortable with writing and pen and ink illustrations. My filter tends to be cut ups of what is around me blurred into my own feelings and interests of the Victorian era. I don't try to categorize myself but I do recognize my influences are a bit more macabre than usual.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Regarding his influences and style; as quoted in "Americymru" http://americymru.blogspot.com/2010/08/interview-with-lorin-morgan-richards.html "An Interview With Lorin Morgan-Richards” (25 August 2010).

Feeling

“I hate and despise a shrewish suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways; a man who can look me in the face, laugh with me, speak truth and deal fairly, is my brother, though his skin is as black as ink or as yellow as an evening primrose.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

What is Coming? (1916)

Hate, Truth, Way

“I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Sermons in Cats"
Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)

“We have had enough perpetually hearing MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE. In the repetition of the word MACHINE, we read the modern artist's ambivalent relationship to mechanical reproduction: on the one hand, the rigorous linear order and uniform application of ink presented by the thrice-repeated type written line celebrates sterility; and on the other hand the content of the sentence itself bemoans the transformation of the industrial paradigm into an aesthetic cliché.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

statement of Lissitzky, 1924; as quoted by Paul Galvez, in 'Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Monkey-Hand October', Vol. 93, (Summer, 2000), published by The MIT Press, pp. 109-137
1915 - 1925

Reading

“Soon after completing the 'La Combe' series [circa 1950] I had a dream in which I was assisted by many children on a scaffold, painting a huge mural made up of square panels fitted together. Each panel was being painted by a child very quickly in long black strokes with huge brushes. The work was done in seconds. Upon waking I immediately made a reminder sketch of the mural. Later I made a drawing of many ink strokes, which I cut up into twenty squares and placed at random in a four-by-five grid..”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

as quoted in "Ellsworth Kelly", John Coplands; Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1971
1969 - 1980

Children, Dreams, Drawing, Painting

“Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.”

F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) British philosopher

No. 25.
Aphorisms (1930)

Heart

“I like working on sponge because it's a simple, light material and always ready to use. The colour and texture meet my aesthetic requirements and it has a lolof volume and physically, is very present in the space. The ink or paint is immediately absorbed into the foam surface, making any corrections almost impossible. It is a material which lends itself to quick, fast application and is particularly good for spontaneous sketching with paint squeezed directly from the tube. The fact that these works will not last (sponge is not a very durable material) does not deter me; it suits the character of the work very well and to an extent reflects my ideas about art.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

At the time of writing exhibition catalogue, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, 1998.

Art, Idea, Light, Painting

“At an ink-stained desk, with his chin cupped in his hands, Titus was contemplating, as in a dream, the chalk-marks on the blackboard. They represented a sum in short division, but might as well have been some hieroglyphic message from a moonstruck prophet to his lost tribe a thousand years ago.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 4, section 2 (p. 410)

Dreams

“The ink of scholars (used in writing) is weighed on the Day of Judgement with the blood of martyrs and the ink of scholars outweighs the blood of martyrs.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

As quoted in Al-Jaami' al-Saghîr by Imam al-Suyuti, where it is declared a "weak Hadith".
Variant translations:
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr.
The Islamic Review, Vol. 22 (1934), p. 105, edited by Khwajah Kamal al-Din
The ink of scholars will be weighed in the scale with the blood of martyrs.
As quoted in Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations of Islamic Mystical Theology (2004) by John Renard
Sunni Hadith

“The history of the (Jewish) people is written in black ink, and has included a series of murders of the prophets, the Mujaheedin, and righteous people. Oh Sons of brave Mujaheedin…You have revived the hopes of this nation through your blessed Jihad…The Islamic nation will not spare money or effort in support of your cause, which is the supreme Muslim cause.”

Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais (1962) Imam in Mecca

Imam Sudayyis in a Friday Sermon at Al-Haram Mosque in Mecca: Either Victory or Martyrdom http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=26 April 2004.

Money, People, Hope, History

“He had been across the veldt, he had seen the battlefields, the still open trenches, and it all came to Chinese labour. They were told it was going to release the slaves, the Uitlanders, to open up South Africa to a great flood of white emigrants. They were told it was going to plant the Union Jack upon the land of the free. But the echoes of the muskets had hardly died out on the battlefields, the ink on the treaty was hardly dry, before the men who plotted the war began to plot to bring in Chinese slaves. (Cheers.) They could talk about their gold; their gold is tainted. (Hear, hear.) They could talk about employing white men; it was not true, and even if it were true, was he going to stand and see his white brothers degraded to the position of yellow slave drivers? No, he was not. (Loud and continued cheers.) These patriots! These miserable patriots! If they had had the custodianship of the opinions of the country 75 years ago, slavery in the colonies would have continued. When the north was fighting the south for the liberty of men, these men would have counted their guineas, would have told them how many white men had plied the lash in the southern states, and they would have said that for miserable cash, miserable trash, the great name of the country required to be bought and sold. Thank God there were no twentieth century Unionist imperialists in office then.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Loud cheers.
Leicester Daily Mercury (6 January 1906)
1900s

Men, God, War, Fight

“King Ink strolls into town…
He sniffs around.”

Nick Cave book King Ink

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), King Ink

“Gentlemen, the most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it. And the most important part of experimentation is not doing the experiment but making notes, ve-ry accurate quantitative notes — in ink. I am told that a great many clever people feel they can keep notes in their heads. I have often observed with pleasure that such persons do not have heads in which to keep their notes. This iss very good, because thus the world never sees their results and science is not encumbered with them. ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 4”

Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith (1925)

People, Pleasure, World, Feeling

“To give without sympathy is to build a temple without the idol and is as futile as painting a picture with black ink on a black-board.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Painting

“There is a shy client who uses invisible ink on Nagiko's body to hide his obvious talent. The woman attempts to develop the invisible ink by bathing in warm water, by standing as close as she dare to a hot fire, by washing her body in the juice of onion-skins until the onions make her weep and her tears prove to be the necessary solvent to reveal the writing.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Section J of 26 Facts About Flesh and Ink
The Pillow Book

Tear, Water

“I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence. It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink. We can debate its origins endlessly and search for villains on ideological grounds, but the reality is pure arithmetic.”

Mitch Daniels (1949) Governor of Indiana

Reported in Kathryn Jean Lopez, " Mitch Daniels Takes CPAC http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/259623/mitch-daniels-takes-cpac-kathryn-jean-lopez", National Review Online (February 11, 2011).

Search, Reality, Time

“Painting in the chamber of a Prince who was indisposed, the Physician said, that he hoped bymeans of his Highness, to obtain also the favor of a picture by Salvator. The Prince made he request, and Salvator readily consented. The Physician then desired the Painter not to egin his picture till he had given him the idea, nd the design. Salvator made no reply; ut when the Physician called for pen and ink o write his prescription, he desired him to stop ill he should tell him what to write. The Docor, not comprehending his meaning, said * Signor Salvator, this is a business which conerns me, not you." "I would have you to know Mr. Doctor" replied Salvator, " that I can more easily instruct you in the cure of your tickt than you can me in the art I profess, being a much better Painter than you are a Physician.'*”

Peter Beckford (1643–1710) Governor of Jamaica

Hope, Art, Idea, Business

“Writing things down is dangerous. Ink can’t be erased without leaving a mess behind.”

Carole Morin British writer

Spying on Strange Men (2013)

“Operations research has many precursors and allied fields, including Taylorism (after Frederick W. Taylor), scientific management and management science, industrial engineering and systems analysis. As one early textbook explained, the roots of OR "are as old as science and the management function. Its name dates back only to 1940" (Churchman et al. 1957: 3). Certainly its practitioners have expended much energy and ink in search of an acceptable definition of OR. Morse tried unsuccessfully to halt the debate by declaring OR to be 'the activity carried on by members of the Operations Research Society' (Morse 1953: 159) But his colleagues were not so easily dissuaded from debate. Much of the concern with definition focused on the sometimes elusive distinctions between OR and neighbouring fields; the attempt to define, or redefine, OR was also born of the desire to allow the subject to evolve beyond the orthodoxy of wartime experience. Crucial considerations included the balance between model and application, and the complexity of the mathematics involved.”

Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1941–2014) Historian of mathematics and logic

Source: Companion encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of the mathematical sciences (2003), p. 841.

Search, Mathematics, Science

“For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, and Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body; a Hero, of worth immeasurable; admiration for whom, transcending the known bounds, became adoration. Has he not the power of articulate Thinking; and many other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with boundless gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this Universe; given assurance to them of their own destiny there? By him they know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made Life alive!—We may call this Odin, the origin of Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the First Norse Thinker bore while he was a man among men. His view of the Universe once promulgated, a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there. In all minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility in all. Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world—!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Life, Men, God, People

“Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), The Tale of Custard the Dragon

Rage

“Here we are at the antipode of automatism [invention from Surrealism] and mechanism, and no less distant from the cunning way of reason. In the action of the machine, in which everything is repeated and predetermined, accident is an abrupt negation.... [the] excess of ink flowing capriciously in thin black rivulets.... this line deflected by a sudden jar, this drop of water diluting a contour – all these are the sudden invasion of the unexpected in a world where it has a right to its proper place.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Motherwell is quoting here the comments of w:Henri Focillon on Japanese legends of 'accidentalism'
The Dada Painters and Poets, Schultz, Wittenborn, New York 1951, p. xxxvii
1950s

World, Way, Quotes, Water

“Black are the horses.
The horseshoes are black.
On the dark capes glisten
stains of ink and wax.
Their skulls are leaden,
which is why they do not weep.
With their patent leather souls
they come down the street.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Los caballos negros son. Las herraduras son negras. Sobre las capas relucen manchas de tinta y de cera. Tienen, por eso no lloran, de plomo las calaveras. Con el alma de charol vienen por la carretera. " Romance de la Guardia Civil Española http://www.poesia-inter.net/index214.htm" from Primer Romancero Gitano (1928)

Soul, Horse

“I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and clear within me, to mark down the main things I can recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after-years, it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the Infinite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly impel me. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindicate itself with truth and freedom through what obstructions soever; how the acorn cast carelessly into the wilder-ness will make room for itself and grow to be an oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, "the lives of remarkable men," in which it has been said, "paper and ink should least of all be spared." I call a man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace-building and kingdom-founding, or only of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. Only the worker thereof, and the spirit that dwelt in him, is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and mark it as it lies in me.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Death, Men, Truth, World

“There is nothing more splendid than the prospect of sitting in the morning before a new ink-stone and a sheet of white paper. The smell of the white paper is like the scent of the skin of a new lover who has just paid a surprise visit out of a rainy garden. And the black ink is like lacquered hair. And the quill? Well the quill is like the instrument of pleasure whose purpose is never in doubt but whose surprising efficiency one always -- always forgets.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

, quoted in Peter Greenaway's The
The Pillow Book

Pleasure, Lovers, Forgetting

“I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut; I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend: "Don't even act like I didn't get that doughnut! I got the documentation right here…oh, wait it's at home…in the file…under 'D', for doughnut."”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

Money, Home, Imagination, Waiting

“Great deeds and utterances are now so diluted with printer’s ink that we can no longer find a sage or saint. Our worthiest men are exhibited and bewritten until they are made as uninteresting as clowns.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 165

Men

“The born-yesterday French-besotted faddists, addicted sniffers of wet printer’s ink, think they’re starting on the ground floor; so they’re condemned to another hundred years of trial and error. The rest of us can safely ignore them.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 202

Error, Thinking

“Burn worldly love,
rub the ashes and make ink of it,
make the heart the pen,
the intellect the writer,
write that which has no end or limit.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Guru Nanak quotes

Love, Heart

“A match as a pen
Blood on the floor as ink
The forgotten gauze cover as paper
But what should I write?
I might just manage my address.
This ink is strange; it clots.
I write you from a prison
in Greece.”

Alexandros Panagoulis (1939–1976) Greek politician and poet

My Address, written in Military Prisons of Bogiati, 5 June 1971 – After beating.
Poetry, Vi scrivo da un carcere in Grecia (I write you from a prison in Greece) (1974)

“I am a galley slave to pen and ink.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Je suis un galérien de plume et d'encre.
Letter to Zulma Carraud (2 July 1832), translated by C. Lamb Kenney.

“The moods of the dark night skies are variously represented like soft black velvet, like the shining black of a scarab beetle, like the patina-ed surface of Indian-inked paper, soft blotting-paper soaked in dark blue ink for forty days, like a black cat's fur shining in moonlight…”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Prospero's Books

Cats, Mood, Night

“An ink bottle, which now seems impossibly quaint, was still thinkable as a symbol in 1970.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

Voices in the Wilderness The Guardian (Saturday 28 September 2002).

“I'm going on a picnic," went Penfold. "And I'm taking anthrax, beer, coffee, doughnuts, estrogen, flamingoes, glue, horses, ink, jelly, Knackwurst, lemonade, murder and Nurofen.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Source: Fullyramblomatic Novels, Fog Juice, Chapter Fifteen

Coffee, Beer, Horse

“Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Not a Kerouac quote, but part of the text from a publicity campaign for the Beat Museum, San Francisco, composed by the advertising agency Gyro: http://paulacw.com/The-Beat-Museum
Misattributed

Life

“The letters Z, O and O dominate the front entrance gates of a capital city zoo. They are made of glass and they tower up two giraffes high. They are the width of one elephant and the colour of bottled blue ink.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

A Zed and Two Noughts

“I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly,
When my hand
Touched her cold and long fingers
Which was from the family of the wailing reed
It gripped an eternal grief in its fist
The pen broke
And pain
Like black drops of ink
dropped on our papery hearts.
I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly;”

Farrokh Tamimi (1934–2003) Iranian poet and translator

Poet, Fare welling Hands

Pain, Family, Heart

“As the words of my book, The Bloodless Revolution, accumulated, I envisaged a parallel growth: the stack of pages they would have to be printed on, thousands of times over; every page representing a slice of forest, a belch of fumes and a squirt of toxic ink.”

Tristram Stuart (1977) British historian

"Is it right to write?" https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2006/nov/24/onpaper, The Guardian (24 November 2006).

Books, Time

“Quantum physicists today are reconciled to randomness at the individual event level, but to expect causality to underlie statistical quantum phenomena is reasonable. Suppose a person shakes an ink pen such that ink spots are formed on a white wall, in what appears for all intents and purposes, randomly. Let us further suppose the random ink spots accumulate to form precise pictures of different known persons' faces every time. We will not regard the overall result to be a happenchance; we are apt to suspect there must be a "method" to the person who is shaking the ink pen.”

Ravi Gomatam (1950) Indian academic

R.Gomatam’s response http://www.bvinst.edu/gomatam/pub-2006-01%20original.htm to Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg's article "Einstein's Mistakes" published in Physics Today, Volume 59, Issue 4, Letters http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v59/i4/p10_s1?bypassSSO=1, October, 2005.

Appearance, Time, Personality

“i keep drinking the ink from my pen
and i'm balancing history books up on my head
but it all boils down to one quotable phrase
if you love something give it away”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

landlocked blues
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Love, Books, History, Drink

“I have observed that very often I gain access to a little secret that I have sought for a long time by way of a fortuitous encounter quite unrelated to the matter: for example six months I try to draw a camel in a way that satisfies me, and I make a thousand attempts without ever managing to do it. Then one day it is a drawing of a plump on the label of a pot of jam or the shadow thrown by an ink pot, or something or other equally unrelated to the matter that provides me with the solution. This kind of thing has happened so often that I have acquired the habit of always being on the outlook, and when I want to draw a camel I no longer limit myself, as I once did, to looking (only, fh) at camels..”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Source: posthumous, Jean Dubuffet, Works, writings Interviews, 2006, p. 44; quote in Dubuffet's letter to Jean Paulhan (letter 123)

Secret, Way, Time, Drawing

“Gandhi's sarva-dharma-samabhâva did not stop at equal respect for all religions; it went much further and stood for equal validity of all religions. The Mahatma had spared no ink or breath to inculcate the belief that all religions embody the same truths, pursue the same goal, and lead to the same spiritual fulfilment.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Freedom of expression - Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy (1998)

Truth, Religion

“And so the teaching (Torah) was likened to water: like water comes down from a high place to a low place, so the teaching descended from its honorable place, as it is His will and wisdom, and the light of Him that be blessed and thought cannot grasp it at all. From there it went in the secret stairway via the worlds, until it was dressed in material things and matters of this world, which are all the ordinants (mitzvot) and their ways, in combinations of material letters in ink on the book, twenty four books in the Tanakh, so thought will be able to comprehend it, and even speech and act, below the level of thought.”

Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812) Orthodox Rabbi, and the founder and first Rebbe of Chabad

V'lakhen nimshela hatora l'mayim: ma mayim yordim mi'makom gavoha l'makom namukh, kakh ha'tora yarda mi'mkom kvoda, sh'hi retzono v'khomato yitbarakh, v'orayta v'kodsha brikh hu kula had v'leyt mahshava tfista biah klal. W'misham nas'a v'yarda b'seter ha'madregot m'madrega l'madrega b'hishtalshelut ha'olamot, ad sh'nitlabsha b'davrim gashmiyim v'inyaney ha'olam haze, sh'hen rov mitzvot hatora k'khulam v'hilkhotehen, w'btzerufei otiot gashmiot b'dio 'al hasefer, 'esrim v'arba'a s'farim sh'batora nevi'im w'khtuvim, kdei sh'tehe kol mahshava tfisa bahen, v'afilu bhinot dibur w'ma'ase sh'lemata m'madregat mahshava tfisa bahen w'mitlabeshet bahen.
Sefer HaTanya (Book of the learner) Part I, Chapter IV

Wisdom, Secret, Books, World

“Doublespeak embedded in a convenient matrix of anticommunist ideology was essential, as the U. S. establishment was obliged to pretend (or internalize the belief) that the huge global expansion of the U. S. political economy on which they had embarked was “defensive” and responsive to some external threat; that we were “containing” somebody else who was committing “aggression” and threatening our “national security.” The words and phrases “defense,” “containment,” “aggression,” and “national security” are core items of the doublespeak lexicon, essential ingredients of the ink squirted out by imperial cuttlefish.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Beyond Hypocrisy, 1992, p. 20.

“Just as soon as the great and glorious Revolution broke out [1918 - after World War 1. ] I gave notice and now live entirely for art. For a while, I tried to create new forms of art from the remains of the old culture. From this Merz painting emerged, painting that happily used every material – Pelikan [was a famous ink mark, then] colors or the rubbish from the rubbish heap. So I experienced the Revolution in the most delightful way and pass for a Dadaist, without being one. As a result, I could introduce Dadaism in Holland [together with Theo van Doesburg and his wife Nele] with complete impartiality. In Holland I became familiar with architecture for the first time.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

In his 'Autobiography of Kurt Schwitters' (6 June 1926), sent to Hans Hilderbrandt; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 92.
1920s

War, World, Art, Color

“What hours I spent of precious time,
What pints of ink I used to waste,
Attempting to secure a rhyme
To suit the public taste,
Until I found a simple plan
Which makes the lamest lyric scan!When I’ve a syllable de trop,
I cut it off, without apol.:
This verbal sacrifice, I know,
May irritate the schol.;
But all must praise my dev’lish cunn.
Who realise that Time is Mon.”

Harry Graham (1874–1936) British writer

Source: Other verse, Poetical economy, Lines 1-12

Time

“Like the intricately rational web of theology woven around the irrational mysteries of faith, the sober explanations of institutions for hoarding literary relics seem like elegant post-factum justifications for what is essentially a sense of sacred awe. An institution of learning seeks significant manuscripts because they possess qualities that scholarship cannot entirely reproduce — an authentic, holistic connection with the great writers of the past. It is not the intellectual content of the manuscript that is important but its material presence — ink spots, tobacco stains, pinworm holes, and foxing included.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Magical Value of Manuscripts," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ehop.htm The Hudson Review (Spring 1996); later published as an introduction to The Hand of the Poet: Poems and Papers in Manuscript, ed. Rodney Phillips (1997) Essays

Faith, Sense, Learning, Past

“People like to come up to me and tell me that I've got nice ink. Except these tattoos aren't just decorations. They are declarations. Every tattoo I have tells its own story about who I am. Drug-free. Honor. And a war against the system. See I'm not some punk kid looking for the next thrill. I'm a highly disciplined athlete, craving to compete with the very best. My obsession is competition and my addiction is wrestling. My name, is C…M… Punk.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Extreme Championship Wrestling. July 11th, 2006.
Extreme Championship Wrestling

War, People, Tattoo

“Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough. …it's going to be very hard to make the world work if there's no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

"Jonathan Franzen Warns Ebooks are Corroding Values," The Guardian (Jan 30, 2012).

World, Justice, Way, Feeling

“One afternoon I went to visit him. [Jacob, an older and close friend of Jopie - a real freebooter]. I knew he was home, I took pen, ink and my sketchbook with me and did half a liter of gin in my pocket. He lived in the back of an alley and was sitting in his chair by the window.... I told him, 'You will get the whole bottle, but one condition. I want to make a beautiful drawing of you, so first you have to sit still for twenty minutes and look at me closely. If I look at you and you don't look at me, the deal is over....'Okay', he said. I never had a model like him before... Stock-still he sat.... and looked at me without a single blink of his eyes. Within half an hour he was there on the paper - razor-sharp... While I am writing this down, it is as if he is sitting in front of me again..”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Op een middag ging ik bij hem op bezoek. [bij Jacob, een oudere en hechte vriend van Jopie en een echte vrijbuiter]. Ik wist dat hij thuis was, nam pen en inkt en mijn schetsboek mee en deed een halve liter jenever in mijn zak. Hij woonde achter in een steegje en zat in zijn stoel bij het raam.. .Ik zei: 'Je krijgt de hele fles van me, onder één voorwaarde. Ik wil een prachtige tekening van je maken en daarvoor moet je eerst twintig minuten doodstil zitten en me strak aankijken. Als ik naar jou kijk en jij kijkt niet naar mij, dan gaat het over.. ..'Afgesproken', zei hij. Ik heb nog nooit zo’n model gehad!.. .Doodstil zat hij.. ..en keek me zonder ook maar één keer met zijn ogen te knipperen strak in mijn gezicht. Binnen een half uur stond hij haarscherp op het papier.. .Terwijl ik dit opschreef was het net alsof hij weer voor me zat.
Source: Jopie de Verteller' (2010) - postumous, p. 58

Beauty, Home, Drawing

“Your bombs and pens like swords, held high, up to my throat. You have made the cost of blood, as cheap as ink and all I think.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"What Has Become"
For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)

Thinking

“Ten Practical Experiments
1. Spacing (use gray appearance charcoal)
2. Shape (in varying proportions)
3. Arrangement
4. Rhythm
5. Drawn Line (charcoal and brush)
6. Masses(Chinese and Japanese ink painting)
7. Tone (difference)
8. Color ( suggested by stain glass)
9. Dark and Light(crayon on black paper)
10. Intensities”

Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) painter from the United States

A Course in Fine Arts- Arthur Dow- Bulletin of College of Art of Association of America Vol 1 no 4 September 1918
A Course in Fine Arts

Color, Light, Appearance, Painting

“Of all kinds of human energy, Art is surely the most free, the least parochial; and demands of us an essential tolerance of all its forms. Shall we waste breath and ink in condemnation of artists, because their temperaments are not our own?”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Context: He is but a poor philosopher who holds a view so narrow as to exclude forms not to his personal taste. No realist can love romantic Art so much as he loves his own, but when that Art fulfils the laws of its peculiar being, if he would be no blind partisan, he must admit it. The romanticist will never be amused by realism, but let him not for that reason be so parochial as to think that realism, when it achieves vitality, is not Art. For what is Art but the perfected expression of self in contact with the world; and whether that self be of enlightening, or of fairy-telling temperament, is of no moment whatsoever. The tossing of abuse from realist to romanticist and back is but the sword-play of two one-eyed men with their blind side turned toward each other. Shall not each attempt be judged on its own merits? If found not shoddy, faked, or forced, but true to itself, true to its conceiving mood, and fair-proportioned part to whole; so that it lives — then, realistic or romantic, in the name of Fairness let it pass! Of all kinds of human energy, Art is surely the most free, the least parochial; and demands of us an essential tolerance of all its forms. Shall we waste breath and ink in condemnation of artists, because their temperaments are not our own?

Art

“Whenever I begin to write a poem or draw a picture I am, in imagination, if not in reality, back in my room where I began to draw pen-and-ink pictures and write verses in my seventeenth year.”

Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) American poet

What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)
Context: Whenever I begin to write a poem or draw a picture I am, in imagination, if not in reality, back in my room where I began to draw pen-and-ink pictures and write verses in my seventeenth year. Both windows of the room look down on the great Governor’s Yard of Illinois. This yard is a square block, a beautiful park. Our house is on so high a hill I can always look down upon the governor. Among my very earliest memories are those of seeing old Governor Oglesby leaning on his cane, marching about, calling his children about him.

Imagination, Reality, Drawing

“There is no such thing as a cheerful poem [... ] Happiness writes in water, not ink.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

Ch 2
The Rahotep series, Book 3: Egypt: The Book of Chaos (2011)

Water, Happiness

“It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually—if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning— you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as—Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so—I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

The Nature of Consciousness http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/watts_alan/watts_alan_article1.shtml; also published as What Is Reality? (1989)

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Learning

“The pity of all this is, you know, a man like that [Sri Ramakrishna] has to have disciples, or no one would ever hear about him. But somehow, as the generations pass, the flame dies out. And eventually the disciples kill him.
I wish that there was a way of putting a time-bomb into scriptures and records — not a time-bomb, but some kind of invisible ink, so that all scriptures would un-print themselves about fifty years after the master's death. And just dissolve.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Audio lecture Ramakrishna, Ramana, and Krishnamurti (in part three of four)

Death, Way, Time

“I have been fascinated by it all, grateful for it all, grateful for the sheer majesty of the existence of ideas, stories, fables, and paper and ink and print and books to hold them all together for a man to take aside and examine alone. But the man I liked most and the man who seemed to remind me of myself — of what I really was and would surely become — was George Bernard Shaw.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Hello Out There (1941)
Context: I have read books about the behavior of mobs — The Mob by Le Bon, if I remember rightly, was one — about the crime in children, and the genius in them, about the greatest bodies of things, and about the littlest of them. I have been fascinated by it all, grateful for it all, grateful for the sheer majesty of the existence of ideas, stories, fables, and paper and ink and print and books to hold them all together for a man to take aside and examine alone. But the man I liked most and the man who seemed to remind me of myself — of what I really was and would surely become — was George Bernard Shaw.

Books, Idea

“Sex, dr… inking and rock'n'roll. ”

Брайанна Рид

Sex

“Oh, hell yeah! I'm sure that ink monsters are specifically susceptible to axes! Can i AXE you a question?! Huh?! You smell pretty bad, you should AXE body spray!”

Марк Фишбах (Markiplier) (1989)

Hell, Question

Peter Beckford (1643–1710) Governor of Jamaica

"I would have you to know Mr. Doctor" replied Salvator, " that I can more easily instruct you in the cure of your tickt than you can me in the art I profess, being a much better Painter than you are a Physician.'

Business, Idea, Painting, Hope

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

I call a man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace-building and kingdom-founding, or only of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. Only the worker thereof, and the spirit that dwelt in him, is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and mark it as it lies in me.
1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Freedom, Making love, Past, Truth

“If ink and pen are snatched from me, shall I
Who have dipped my finger in my heart's blood complain—
Of if they seal my tongue, when I have made
A mouth of every round link of my chain?”

Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911–1984) Punjabi poet

Poems by Faiz, translated by Victor Kiernan, 1971, p. 117
Poetry, Stanzas

Heart

“In France the height of the structures is limited to five or six storeys: in America stores frequently tower up fifteen storeys or more, and with rapid smooth-running lifts one floor is as good as another. These buildings measure their floor area by the acre, and twenty, thirty, or even forty acres of floor space—or even two million square feet—are not extraordinary, while it is quite likely that before the ink on these pages has become dry some great merchant with imagination, courage and ambition will announce his purpose of erecting a structure perhaps twice as large as any now in existence. If he does so it will not be for the sake of having the biggest thing on earth but because more space will allow him to set the word "perfection" further out in the hitherto unexplored fields of endeavour.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Perfection, Courage, Imagination

“Yes, the bleeding heart was something else again. A gruesome symbol on a vivarium floor. Fingers that broke without their owner noticing. An ink drawing appearing from nowhere on a dossier cover, like a signature. A signature.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: A Gift From Earth (1968), Chapter 12, "The Slowboat" (p. 210)

Drawing, Heart, Appearance

“People predict by making up stories.
People predict very little and explain everything.
People live under uncertainty whether they like it or not.
People believe they can tell the future if they work hard enough.
People accept any explanation as long as it fits the facts.
The handwriting was on the wall. It was just the ink that was invisible.
People often work hard to obtain information they already have and avoid new knowledge.
Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic Universe. In this match, surprises are expected.
Everything that has already happened must have been inevitable.
A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.
The difference between being very smart and very foolish is often very small.
So many problems occur when people fail to be obedient when they are supposed to be obedient, and fail to be creative when they are supposed to be creative
The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
It is sometimes easier to make the world a better place than to prove you have made the world a better place.”

Amos Tversky (1937–1996) Israeli psychologist

Source: Notes made by Tversky for a scientific paper, c.1972. Michael Lewis. "The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World". Penguin, 2016 (ISBN 9780141983035).

Knowledge, Problem, Thinking, People

Quotes about ink page 2

Quotes about ink
page 2