Quotes of note from The Light That Never Was by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.:
(Page numbers gleaned from the 1973 DAW mass-market paperback.)
"Being an artist is something else. It's kind of like a state of mind. The moment an artist stops trying to do his best work in every painting, the moment he takes a shortcut because the painting is only going to be sold to or tourist who doesn't know any better, he stops being an artist. The moment he tries to please his customers instead of himself. he starts being a fraud." (p. 84)
"[M]y reputation as an artist was more a guarantee of quality than his reputation as a dealer was a guarantee of sales... ." (p. 84)
"[A] large number of artists would borrow a man's toenails right off his feet if they thought of a use for them." (p. 86)
"Isn't it funny the way things look different from what they really are?" (p. 86)
"Artists beg and borrow, but no matter how broke they are, they don't steal." (p. 87)
"[P]overty was tolerable only when one was unaccustomed to anything else." (p. 89)
"Rumors can start about anything... ." (p. 92)
"Rumors are usually slanted to someone's disadvantage, and the reverse of the slant will point unerringly at the author. A rumor that's true, though, is a rumor with a devilishly awkward kink in it. It points everywhere and nowhere." (p. 93)
"There's more mold than greatness in ... traditions." (p. 94)
"Even a great mathematician feels the need of some physical labor for his health's sake... ." (p. 100)
"A person who performs all kinds of contortions is highly conspicuous." (p. 106)
"Serious artists judge other artists only on the basis of how well they paint... ." (p. 109)
"Everything was perfect, and ... that could only mean that something was very, very wrong." (p. 110)
"We are all guilty." (p. 115)
"Every life is a monument to all life... . ... Every life is a destroyer of life. Each race, each species, must answer to those it has tormented before it accuses its own tormentors." (p. 115)
"[E]very life, no matter how minute, how humble, how loathsome in appearance or habits, every life is a monument to all life." (p. 115)
"Artists create, and those who devote their lives to creation are slower to destroy." (p. 115)
"If there's no warning, a dozen men with explosives could do a horrible amount of damage." (p. 126)
"Artists aren't thieves. ... [B]ut there's nothing to prevent thieves from dressing like artists... ." (p. 131)
"I am suspicious of obvious conclusions." (p. 134)
"Those who read the message remember it long after the display has been removed." (p. 134)
"The correct question was why men hate, because someone assuredly had hated enough to wantonly destroy, but the answer to that lay in the provinces of medicine and philosophy." (p. 135)
"[C]rises sometimes jolted the most prosaic painter into heroic leaps of imagination." (p. 137)
"When people are dwarfed to insignificance, isn't it better to omit them?" (p. 146)
"Few artists are men of action... ." (p. 149)
"A plausible lie can be much more convincing than the truth." (p. 149)
"Maybe that's what's wrong with this world... . ... Everyone is suspect." (p. 150)
"[A]ll ... art needs a collision with reality." (p. 157)
"[O]ne art lesson she had learned well concerned the inutility of arguments about art... ." (p. 159)
"[T]he artists said I painted almost as ineptly as a critic." (p. 159)
"Every life is a monument to all life... ." (p. 162)
"It's the market place that determines value... ." (p. 169)
"My valuations aren't based upon what someone else paid, but upon what I'm willing to pay." (p. 169)
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