I've collected some interesting quotes over the years. Some were possibilities for chapter openings in my rendering book, and others were possibilities for calligraphy. Here are some of the quotes that I haven't used, and I think are both interesting and off the beaten track.

 

from Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
by Jerry Mander, Quill Books, 1978

Confinement itself, the removal of a creature from its natural habitat into a rearranged world where its ordinary techniques for survival and satisfaction are no longer operative, produces several inevitable results:

1) The creature becomes dependent for survival upon whoever controls the new environment. It will use its intelligence to learn whatever new tricks are necessary to fit that system. If it takes tricks and changes to stay alive, then that's what it takes.

2) The creature becomes focused upon (addicted to) whatever experiences remain available in the new environment.

3) The creature therefore reduces its own mental and physical expectations to fit what can be gotten.

Confined creatures that cannot fit this pattern go crazy, revolt, or die.

 

from Tristram Shandy
by Laurence Sterne, 1768
...have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself, - have they not had their HOBBY HORSES; - their running horses, - their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums & their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets, - their maggots and their butterflies? - and so long as a man rides his HOBBY HORSE peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

 

from Image Synthesis
by Michael I. Mills, 1985

An important question one can raise then is this: Is there a better -- or at least more sophisticated -- way of conceiving of the task of depiction in computer graphics than as a contest with reality, a quest to "fool" the perceptual system via imitation of the real world? The communication of visual truths in an image may have less to do with the manufacturing of perfect copies of retinal images than with the skillful manipulation of evocative forms; less to do with transcribing reality than with suggesting it pictorially.

 

from Ride the Wild High School (A Duckman Episode)
spoken by Cornfed, 1985

Sometimes after an electrical storm I see in five dimensions.

 

from The History of Sexuality
by Michel Foucault, 1978

There is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying things.

 

from Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation
by E.H. Gombrich, 1960

If we assume ... that natural signs can simply be copied from nature, the history of art represents a complete puzzle. It has become increasingly clear since the late nineteenth century that primitive art and child art use a language of symbols rather than "natural signs" ... All art originates in the human mind, in our reactions to the world rather than in the visible world itself, and it is precisely because all art is "conceptual" that all representations are recognizable by their style.

 

from Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
by Tom Robbins, 1976
Difficulties illuminate existence. But they must be fresh, and of high quality.

 

from Goines Posters
by David Lance Goines, 1985

I know that if I just beat my head against the wall long enough, an idea will infallibly result, but there is always the nameless terror that maybe this time the Muse is not merely hitchhiking through Georgia but has been kidnapped, murdered and tumbled into a ditch. Or maybe she's mad at me.

 

from The Real Frank Zappa Book
by by Frank Zappa (written with Peter Occhiogrosso), 1989

In order to deviate successfully, one has to have at least a passing acquaintance with whatever norm one expects to deviate from.

 

from Look Inside Your Brain (A Poke & Look Learning Book)
by Heather Alexander , 1991

With a brain like yours, you'll never be bored! Making up stories, inventing games, and drawing pictures are all forms of thinking. Your imagination and creativity are part of what makes your brain special. No computer can do what your brain does.