illustrators

"In my position I simply can’t afford pangs of conscience. Fortunately, they fade the more power one acquires. It’s an entirely natural process."

"In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money – it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need."

"It’s not a story for people with thin skins and weak nerves, whom I would advise to replace this book on the pile at once and slink off to the children’s section. Shoo! Be gone, you cry-babies and quaffers of chamomile tea, you wimps and softies! This book tells of a place where reading is still a genuine adventure, and by adventure I mean the old-fashion definition of the word that appears in the Zamonian dictionary: ‘A daring enterprise undertaken in a spirit of curiosity or temerity, it is potentially life-threatening, harbours unforeseeable dangers and sometimes proves fatal.’ Yes, I speak of a place where reading can drive people insane. Where books may injure and poison them – indeed, even kill them. Only those who are thoroughly prepared to take such risks in order to read this book – only those willing to hazard their lives in so doing – should accompany me to the next paragraph. The remainder I congratulate on their wise but yellow-bellied decision to stay behind. Farewell, you cowards! I wish you a long and boring life, and, on that note, bid you goodbye!"

"You probably suppose that what you heard last night was music. Allow me to correct you: it was acoustic alchemy, hypnosis by means of sound waves. Music is the least resistible of all the arts, so I simply had to make use of it. Try getting an audience to dance by reciting a poem! Try getting them to march! Impossible! Only music can do that."

"Many people may think it is insane of someone endowed with such a potential abundance of power to spend his life producing works of art which no one can see. Well, my own ideas of morality prescribe that only a lunatic would aspire to subordinate the fate of others to his own wishes. I leave it to a higher authority to decide which view is the right one."

"Writing is a desperate attempt to extract some dignity – and a modicum of money – from solitude."

"I chewed them as I looked round the room, feeling thoroughly restored. A drink of water and a handful of smoked maggots had sufficed to turn a despairing wreck into a cheerful optimist. It isn’t the brain that governs our state of mind, it’s in the stomach."

"“How can the answer to today’s questions be in such an old book?” “The answers to almost all of today’s questions can be found in old books,” Smyke retorted. “If you want to find out, look them up. If not, forget it.”"

"I’m not much of an expert on entomology because most insects fill me with a revulsion in proportionate to the number of legs they possess."

"In the end, because you become inured to anything you meet in vast numbers, I grew accustomed to the sight of these innumerable skeletons. I ceased to flinch whenever I rounded a bend in a tunnel and was confronted by a skeletal figure with its arm raised in salutation. There was even something comforting about this world of the dead, because the absence of life betokened the absence of danger. All that is evil stems from the living; the dead are a peaceable bunch."

"“No, literature isn’t eternal,” he cried. “It’s a thing of the moment. Even if you made books with pages of steel and diamond letters, they would some day crash into the sun and melt, together with our planet. Nothing is eternal, least of all in art. It doesn’t matter how long an author’s work continues to glimmer after his death. What matters is how brightly it burns while he’s still alive.”"

"It symbolizes the three components of power: power, power and power."

"His unorthodox didactic method of imparting his monumental store of knowledge was a curious mixture of megalomania and modesty, because he claimed to have picked it up from others. The truth was, he had invented it all himself and never tired, day after day and lesson after lesson, of devising new absurdities that would fire my imagination."

"This was nonsense, of course, but he lectured so brilliantly and plausibly that I could only marvel at his inexhaustible ingenuity."

"“Regenschein is dead, my friend. You’re delirious.” “No one who writes a good book is really dead.”"

"Curiosity is the most powerful incentive in the world. Why? Because it’s capable of overcoming the two most powerful disincentives in the world: common sense and fear."

"Yes, yes, but why was it invisible, like everything you had to take on trust? Because it didn’t exist at all?"

"The problem is this: in order to make money – lots of money – we don’t need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it."

"One’s memory functions like a spider’s web. Unimportant things – the wind, for example – a web lets through, whereas captured flies become lodged in it and are stored there until the spider needs and devours them."

"I now understood the secret of music and knew what makes it so infinitely superior to all the other arts: its incorporeality. Once it has left an instrument it becomes its own master, a free and independent creature of sound, weightless, incorporeal and perfectly in tune with the universe."

"Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think."

"But his illness never attained the merciful degree of severity that would have entitled him to a spell in a lunatic asylum and absolve him from further work. It wasn’t quite severe enough for a lunatic; only for a writer."

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written, that’s all."

"When Anna Botsford Comstock 1885 died in summer 1930 at the age of seventy-five, the pioneering naturalist left behind not only an ailing husband—famed entomologist , who was severely debilitated by a series of strokes and would pass away just half a year later—but a 760-page manuscript chronicling their decades of marriage, travel, teaching, and scientific study. It would be nearly a quarter-century until that memoir reached a wide readership, in the form of a book compiled by , Anna’s second cousin and the couple’s closest living relative. Published in 1953 by a division of , The Comstocks of Cornell was in fact just part of Anna’s original manuscript. It had been heavily edited by Herrick, also a professor of entomology on the Hill—not only to de-emphasize events and characters he considered irrelevant, but to streamline the language, remove any hint of controversy, and shift the focus toward John Henry’s august accomplishments, including his role as founder of Cornell’s entomology department."

"A real is never contented with maps of places and pictures of things, but always desires to see the places and things themselves."

"... the only way to become a connoisseur of honey is to keep s, for thus only may one learn to discriminate between honey made from and that gathered from ; or to distinguish, at first taste, the product of in bloom from that drawn from vagrant blossoms, which, changing day by day, mark the season's processional."

"Perhaps half the falsehood in the world is due to lack of power to detect the truth and to express it. aids both in discernment and in expression of things as they are."

"My interest in the way these writers are portrayed in the media began * when I started a PhD in creative writing at Victoria University, in 2009. I realised that even though some of them were challenging ethnic stereotypes with their work, they were often completely exoticised in the media around them."

"I discovered that — contrary to what I’d expected — in the 40 years since the publication of Witi Ihimaera’s first book, the mainstream media’s representation of these authors has not become more nuanced, or less racist. Instead, the racism has gone underground, coming out as a kind of simplistic “celebration”, and keeping all such authors firmly on the outside: nice, exotic additions to “New Zealand Literature."

"My biggest fear has always been that someone would be trapped back here and couldn't get help. No ambulance or police would be able to get through. It's good to know that after all of these years, my family will be safe. I've been stuck many times from the outside and couldn't get home and I've been stuck on the inside and couldn't get out."

"He's been in the Coast Guard his entire life, and one of the things he does and does well is what the Coast Guard motto is, be always prepared. He takes every new event and gets down and starts working and sees it to its end."

"And the city of Troy is Pākehā culture, which I envisage in this book as a walled fortress. In front of this fortress, the horse is taking shape. There are voices clamouring inside it, about to be let out."

"The voices belong to some of Aotearoa’s foremost writers: Tusiata Avia, Tina Makereti, Chris Tse, Paula Morris, and Karlo Mila, among many others, who I’ve interviewed for my upcoming book, The Outliers: Who do we want to be?"

"In the story of the Trojan Horse, after a ten-year siege, the Greeks pretend to sail away and leave a “gift” of a wooden horse on the doorstep of the city of Troy. The Trojans pull the horse into their city. But, under the cover of night, a select force of men creep out of it, torching the city, and thus winning the war for the Greeks."

"Wellington, with its hills and fault lines and glittering sea, is like a perfect espresso cup of culture and energy. It’s also home to a lot of quiet minorities, like the Greek community I come from, who carry stories that might be less well known than others. I can’t wait to return"

"I am a Greek-New Zealand writer and I am building a horse like this — or, more accurately, I’m allowing it to build itself."

"But, in this story, the Trojan Horse is a non-fiction book that I’m writing about the media in Aotearoa — and the warriors are writers. Māori writers, Pasifika writers, French and Chinese and “other” writers. Any writers that haven’t been identified by the press as part of a Pākehā mainstream."

"Pin-head, parsimoniously covered with thin dark hair, on a short, dumpy body. Small features, prominent nose, chipmunk teeth and no chin, conveying the sharp, weak look of a little rodent. Absent-minded eyes with a half-glimmer of observation. Prim, critical mouth and faint coloring. Personality lifeless, retiring, snippy, quietly egotistical. Lacks vigor and sparkle."

"Process work doesn’t appeal to me. That’s why I like drypoint and not just an etching. I’ve done only twenty-five bitten etchings in my life because I don’t care for all that business that goes on that gets between you and the work. I love drypoint and I think that actually it gives you the same wonderful satisfaction that carving in stone must give to a person. You’re really making something with great effort. And I think that effort is very important in the production of any work of art. If it’s too easy, if you’re just gliding around on a wax surface and then biting it in acid, it doesn’t give you that sensation of making something … That wonderful feeling that you have for the material and the real strength that you have to employ to get the line the right depth and richness and to do the cross-hatching so that the metal doesn’t break down but still you get a rich black. It gives you, oh, a great sensation"

"My creative process is a fluid and ongoing dance. Ideas come in a visual flash, and I often spend months manifesting that vision into a painting or sculpture. I allow my work to unfold naturally, without strict rules, often incorporating current events or addressing a subject I feel passionate about."

"I feel that creativity is a state of mind, and I try to bring that energy to everything I do. I love to paint, sing, play the piano, do yoga, take long walks with my husband, laugh daily and feed my friends. I've discovered that service to others is important, but not to the point of self-depletion, so balance and routine help to restore my energy."

"My "Peoplescapes" (2D and 3D oil paintings, with sculpture, fabric, found objects on canvas) are detailed narratives addressing social, spiritual and political issues facing society. When I travel, I love to paint plein air and capture the beauty and light of the landscape."

"I have healed my deepest wounds by painting, writing music and singing. These activities have allowed me not only to express myself, but to sit with the painful issues, providing space, and enabling me to see with a broader perspective. Sometimes, I'm lucky enough to release the neurotic patterns and move through those tender areas. My twenty-six year relationship with my husband has been an anchor and has helped me grow. Marriage makes one accountable and reflects back whatever you're dishing out."

"I have developed a strong center through 30 years of yoga. I've grown aware of my weaknesses and strengths and regularly push myself to explore those boundaries. I am in touch with my fear and insecurity; while hearing those self-critical voices, I try not to act on these emotions any longer. Most of the time, I recognize these old reactions to pain and channel this self-knowledge into my art."

"I've recently created a new technique I call "Plane- slashing" where I layer seemingly disparate paintings on stretched canvases, slash through them, and then work into the dimensions of canvas as a whole, sometimes adding sculpture and found objects. These are especially effective when I'm working through emotional upheavals."

"I have a new book entitled "Peoplescapes -- My Story From Purging To Painting" an illustrated memoir (Babu Books)."

"I have come to realize that art is truly a universal language. For decades I’ve been creating “Peoplescapes,” oil, sculptured characters and applied objects on canvas, addressing cultural, political and spiritual issues facing society. By juxtaposing people in recognizable places and situations, each painting weaves together a story about contemporary life, filled with layers of detail, symbolism and humor."

"Allow your heart's desire to be revealed, test your resilience, prioritize your values, and commit to the process. The rewards come while you're busy paving the path.""

"I recommend that others learn to identify their intuitive voice, and follow their muse. Get fearlessly involved in your own creative process, learn to love it, and don't get distracted by public opinion."

"I am a painter, author and singer-songwriter channeling my experiences and emotions through my creative disciplines. The love and commitment of my husband, creative partner and best friend inspires me to overcome my obstructions with grace and rationality."