Tracing Quotations
Ray Bradbury? Erica Jong? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The science fiction luminary Ray Bradbury relied deeply on his intuitions and his imagination to compose lyrical prose. He believed that creativity was obstructed by over-thinking and intellectualizing. The following two statements have been attributed to him: Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art. Thinking is the …
Continue reading “Self-Consciousness Is the Enemy of All Art”
Graham Greene? Doris Lessing? Erica Jong? Dear Quote Investigator: An artist who has achieved a distinctive reputation with critics and the general public is placed into a metaphorical strait jacket. Newly fashioned artworks are expected to be similar to previous artworks. Change and innovation are frowned upon. This notion can be expressed using a harsher …
Continue reading “A Reputation Is Like a Death Mask. I Wanted To Smash the Mask”
Erica Jong? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Humor is a helpful tool for understanding and accepting events that are difficult to process emotionally such as divorce or death. I think the U.S. novelist Erica Jong made an observation similar to this. Would you please help me to locate her comment? Quote Investigator: In 1984 Erica Jong …
Erica Jong? Oscar Wilde? Robert Webster Jones? H. L. Mencken? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: As a single person I enjoy the following joke about bigamy. Here are two versions: (1) Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same. (2) Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. The first …
Continue reading “Bigamy Is Having One Spouse Too Many. Monogamy Is the Same”