arts

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty

Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.

This was awkward to infinity. Alex living here would change my entire routine. I was sharing a bathroom with my boyfriend. How scary was that? I had tampons and pads and everything in there. He was going to be naked in the shower on the other side of my bedroom wall. And I was going to be naked in the shower with him in my house.

The first few weeks of school were always surreal, like you landed on an alien planet with strange teachers and unfamiliar classrooms, even though the lockers and cafeteria seemed familiar.

When a show ends, for a few days, my body sizzles with leftover energy, like a tree in the wake of a lightning strike.

When you're in a show, all through rehearsals Tech Week hovers out there like a magical holy grail. In reality, Tech Week is always a train wreck of missed cues, forgotten lines, malfunctioning set pieces and short tempers.

When there is no tension between the inner beingness and that which is being expressed, there is grace.

Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn't say that to a dying man.

When the business people get done with the arts, all that__ left will be entertainment.

Writing is a bittersweet addiction. The more it drains you; the more replenished you feel, and you crave it even more.

A midst deceit I found the truth;there in the rough I found a diamond.And from the moment we met,I think of no one elseToday I choose to be, to live and breathe;to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse.And you, the object of my delight:a like-minded opposite I am myself with,a mind-fuck times six, seven, eight thousand and three.I know that you love me with every inch of your deep.

Who among us has not suddenly looked into his child's face, in the midst of the toils and troubles of everyday life, and at that moment "seen" that everything which is good, is loved and lovable, loved by God! Such certainties all mean, at bottom, one and the same thing: that the world is plumb and sound; that everything comes to its appointed goal; that in spite of all appearances, underlying all things is - peace, salvation, gloria; that nothing and no one is lost; that "God holds in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all that is." Such nonrational, intuitive certainties of the divine base of all that is can be vouchsafed to our gaze even when it is turned toward the most insignificant-looking things, if only it is a gaze inspired by love. That, in the precise sense, is contemplation...Out of this kind of contemplation of the created world arise in never-ending wealth all true poetry and all real art, for it is the nature of poetry and art to be paean and praise heard above all the wails of lamentation. No one who is not capable of such contemplation can grasp poetry in a poetic fashion, that is to say, in the only meaningful fashion. The indispensability, the vital function of the arts in man's life, consists above all in this: that through them contemplation of the created world is kept alive and active.

Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators

The proliferation of creative power can transform the world for all of its inhabitants.

Arts without a spiritual relative is like frying buns with water.

The value of an artist is more because of his originality than his skill.

Theater is the crucible where we can create the dynamics of life without suffering the flames of their combustion.

God plants the talent and it grows, sustained by a spirit-given strength to endure, even in the midst of darkness. It thrives in the valleys of life and ignores the peaks. It blooms like a flower when cradled by the warmth of the sun. It remains in a hidden stairwell in a concentration camp. It grows, fed in secret, in the heart of every artist.