Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
art necessarily divides itself into three forms progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the lyrical form, the form wherein the artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents his image in mediate relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form, the form wherein he presents
... See moreJames Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Wisehouse Classics Edition)
“WRITING POETRY IS an unnatural act,” Elizabeth Bishop once wrote. “It takes skill to make it seem natural.”
Teju Cole • Known and Strange Things
Theory before ‘theory’ notes
The origin of the English major? Many factors, but mostly, it was a way to serve the middle-class/give them an advantage without redistribution of wealth and maintaining the political status quo.
Beginning theory notes
Seen as a replacement for religion, English became the substitute as a way to moralize the lower classes
... See more‘Every character a dramatist presents must have within it the seeds of its future development.’
John Yorke • Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them
to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him.
Oscar Wilde • The Picture of Dorian Gray

Academia stifles cinema, encircling it like a liana vine wraps round a tree, smothering and draining away all life. Construct films, don’t deconstruct them. Create poetry, don’t destroy it. Whenever I encounter film theorists, I lower my head and charge.
Paul Cronin • Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin
Joyce is clearly both exemplary and representative for Lacan for how we can do new things with words; and this has something to do with aliveness.
Adam Phillips • On Giving Up
He had a sort of sunken depth of expression, and a grave, slow smile, suggesting no great quickness of wit, but an unimpassioned intensity of feeling which promised well for Martha’s happiness. He had little of the light, inexpensive urbanity of his countrymen, and more of a sort of heavy sincerity in his gaze which seemed to suspend response until
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