The parasite of art, the virus of art, never ceases to gnaw awat at your brain, never ceases to torture you with the knowledge that whatever you’re doing could be done more beautifully, more powerfully, more stirringly, more disturbingly, more deeply.

Brian Morton

Categorized in : Art Brain Viruses

You seize your freedom in a spirit of rebelliousness, exuberance, defiant joy. But to live that choice -- over the weeks and months and years to come -- requires different qualities. It requires that you turn hard, turn rigid. Because it isn't a choice that the world encourages, you have to wear a suit of armor to defend it.

suits-of-armor joy years

What you are is a complicated girl with simple needs. You need your books and time to read, and you need a few friends and you need someone-not to take care of you, but to care for you. If you have all those things, you'll always be alright.

girl simple book

A piece of writing is only worth doing if you're a different person at the end of the process than you were at the beginning.

pieces different writing

So we recast the wisdom of the great thinkers in the shape of our illusions. They are shiny from their makeovers, they are fabulous and gorgeous, and they want us to know that we can have it all.

fabulous shapes want

The moments of beauty, the moments when you feel blessed, are only moments; but memory and imagination, treasuring them, can string them together... Everything else passes away; that which you love remains.

imagination blessed memories

The river was so blue it seemed to be breathing. by Brian Morton

The river was so blue it seemed to be breathing.

breathing blue rivers

The world, the human world, is bound together not by protons and electrons, but by stories. Nothing has meaning in itself: all the objects in the world would be shards of bare mute blankness, spinning wildly out of orbit, if we didn't bind them together with stories.

orbit would-be together

Even in your smallest gestures, you express your sense of honor,... by Brian Morton

Even in your smallest gestures, you express your sense of honor, if you have one.

gestures smallest honor

Every choice we make is either a growth choice or a fear choice. by Brian Morton

Every choice we make is either a growth choice or a fear choice.

choices