I have always seen life personally; my interest or sympathy or indignation is not aroused by an abstract cause but by the plight of a single person. . . Out of my response to an individual develops an awareness of a problem to the community, then to the country, then to the world.
He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.
The Universe was a silly place at best. . . but the least likely explanation for it was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that abstract somethings 'just happened' to be atoms that 'just happened' to get together in ways which 'just happened' to look like consistent laws and some configurations 'just happened' to possess self-awareness and that two 'just happened' to be the Man from Mars and a bald-headed old coot with Jubal inside.
The body should not just be something you see. It's also the inside of it. It's frightening and abstract and much more than pretty or not pretty. The shape of it is boring.
fashion seems to exist for an abstract person who is not you or me.
I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.
Music, the most abstract and uncanny art, is an eternal river of sound moving through time. We can free ourselves from whatever may be holding us back, and join that flowing river.
Maybe I was a little jealous or envious of the abstract painters - but the truth was I thought what they were doing was boring.
If you seek just a little truth, as most, you should not ignore abstract forms, the basis from which all short-lived experiences we call reality springs.
Yes, I did, I mean I painted er, in a kind of abstract expressionist way, because of course that was exciting.
My art is not abstract, it lives and breathes
Color is for me the purest form of expression, the purest abstract reality.
The idea of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.
I am more greatly moved by people who struggle to express themselves. . . I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion.
I never use nature as a starting point. I never abstract from nature; I never consciously think of nature when I paint.
People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn't fit with what they already know.
There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.
Qualities like love and compassion are not just abstract virtues that are the property of saints and adepts. Anyone can develop these qualities in themselves by doing spiritual practices. As the Buddha said, Come and see.
I was never really seeking to play music. I knew I wanted to do it, but I think I wasn't seeking it out because it seemed so abstract to me.
It would be very hard to write a serious drama and say some of these things. You can be much more abstract and allusive with horror, and it's very forgiving to the author. You don't necessarily have to take an absolutely positive position. You can just write whatever.