Take On Art

The public want to be free. That's their right. And it is certainly not men who stand in their way. The day a woman's honor is no longer located below the navel, she will be free. And perhaps healthier too.
— Paul Gauguin, The Writings of a Savage, Daniel Guérin (ed.), p. 69.

I remember Manet too. Another artist whom no one could rival. Once upon a time, having seen one of my (early) paintings, he told me it was very good; whereupon I answered the master respectfully, "Oh. I'm only an amateur." In those days I worked for a broker, and I studied art only evenings and holidays.
     "Indeed you are not," said Manet ... "The only amateurs are the people who do bad paintings."
     Those words were sweet to my ears.
— Paul Gauguin, Ibid., p. 260.

                         Epitaph

At times he lived gaily as a starling.
Amorous, careless and tender in turn,
At times he was somber, dreaming like
      /some sad Clitandre,
One day he heard a knocking at his door.

It was Death! So he asked her to wait
Until he had completed his last sonnet,
And then calmly he went to be laid out
At the bottom of the cold coffin, in which
      /his body shivered.

He was lazy, so they say,
He let the ink dry too often in the well.
He wished to know all things but
     /discovered nothing.

And when the moment came when,
     /tired of this life,
One winter evening at last his soul was
     /torn from him,
He went away asking: Why did I come?
— Gérard de Nerval: Selected Writings, G. Wagner (tr.), p. 249.

     But it does one good to have gaping wounds in his conscience, because they make him more sensitive to every bite. I believe one should read only such books as bite and prick one ... a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
— A Franz Kafka Miscellany, Harry Slochower (ed.), p. 77.

December 3, 1914
....My only pleasure is reading and writing. Maman doesn't like that very much, she says I will never earn any money, but my idea isn't to make money like the Americans, who drink it and eat it and jingle it in their hands. I don't want that, I don't aspire to anything, I just want to be allowed to think and contemplate the landscape and to be left to read in peace, that's the truth. I prefer not to think unless I am alone. When I am alone I read, I think and I write. These last days I have written many stories. Then when I am tired I sit at the window which looks out on the ugly courtyard, but as a consolation I imagine that it's a countryside. I pretend the ugly dry plants are beautiful flowers, the ugly red wall a beautiful golden gate that is the entrance to the grounds of a pretty chateau. Then once I am inside I think endlessly, I imagine that the Negro servants are handsome little princes who walk about in their chateau. Perhaps those are foolish ideas, but they are true and perhaps I am mad. So much the worse for me. I like being like that and I shall always be that way, for I have no intention of changing until someone more sensible than I tells me to, and even then it will be with regret.
— Anaïs Nin, Linotte: The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin 1914-1920, p. 30.