My self ... is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand


Paul Klee

Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars. A meteor makes a striking effect for a moment. You look up and cry "There!" and it is gone forever. Planets and wandering stars last a much longer time. They often outshine the fixed stars and are confounded by them by the inexperienced; but this only because they are near. It is not long before they must yield their place; nay, the light they give is reflected only, and the sphere of their influence is confined to their orbit—their contemporaries. Their path is one of change and movement, and with the circuit of a few years their tale is told. Fixed stars are the only ones that are constant; their position in the firmament is secure; they shine with a light of their own; their effect today is the same as it was yesterday, because, having no parallax, their appearance does not alter with a difference in our standpoint. They belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of this earth.


Arthur Schopenhauer

Farewell, false love, the oracle of lies,
A mortal foe and enemy to rest;
An envious boy, from whom all cares arise,
A bastard vile, a beast with rage possessed;
A way of error, a temple full of treason,
In all effects contrary unto reason.


Sir Walter Raleigh

Behold that great Plotinus swim
Buffeted by such seas;
Bland Rhadamanthus beckons him,
But the Golden Race looks dim,
Salt blood blocks his eyes.

CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI: THE STUDIO AS GROUPE MOBILE

If in the real world a sculpture may belong to one arrangement only, photography enables combinations of the same piece in different configurations, positions, and orientations. Brancusi articulated the studio around groupes mobiles (mobile groups), each comprising several pieces of sculpture, bases, and pedestals. Assembling and reassembling his sculptures for the camera, Brancusi used photography as a diary of his sculptural permutations. He also developed an aesthetic antithetical to the usual photographic standards. His photos radieuses (radiant photos) are characterized by flashes of light that dematerialize the static, monolithic materiality of traditional sculpture. http://moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/originalcopy/intro04.html