Randall Jarrell Quotes about Art

The safest way to avoid the world is through art; and the safest way to be linked to the world is through art.

The safest way to avoid the world is through art; and the safest way to be linked to the world is through art.

Art, World, Way

Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because it is life itself.

Randall Jarrell

Art, Ornaments, Occupation

"No Other Book: Selected Essays" by Randall Jarrell, edited by Brad Leithauser, (p. 15), 1999.

Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has never needed to think twice about anything. His works are the mad scene from Giselle , on ice skates: he weeps, pulls out his hair holding his wrists like Lifar and tells you what Life is, all at a gliding forty miles an hour.

Randall Jarrell

Art, Thinking, Hair

"The Lost World". Book by Randall Jarrell, p. 159, 1965.

Most works of art are, necessarily, bad...; one suffers through the many for the few.

Randall Jarrell

Art, Suffering, Works Of Art

"The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrel, p. 200l, 1969.

The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.

Randall Jarrell

Art, Real, Men

"The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell,"An Unread Book", p. 20, 1969.

First one gets works of art, then criticism of them, then criticism of the criticism, and, finally, a book on The Literary Situation , a book which tells you all about writers, critics, publishing, paperbacked books, the tendencies of the (literary) time, what sells and how much, what writers wear and drink and want, what their wives wear and drink and want, and so on.

Randall Jarrell

Art, Book, Wife

"Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Very Graceful Are the Uses of Culture" (p. 211), 1980.