“When a man devotes himself body and spirit to a single object, if he has training and aptitude, no matter how mediocre he may be in ordinary affairs, he will produce something so nearly akin to a work of genius as to deceive half the judges who think themselves competent to decide between genius and talent. ("The Phantom Model")”
“They were both young men under thirty. Art is not so precocious as literature, and does not send quite so many early potatoes into the market, so that the age of thirty is considered young enough for a painter to have learnt his business sufficiently to be marketable from the picture-dealing point of view. ("The Phantom Model")”
“If you really love life you're walking in the shadow of death all the time...Death is the shadow of life, and the more one is obsessed with life the more one is obsesses with death. I'm greedy for life and I'm greedy as an artist. Francis Bacon in conversation in Daniel Farson”
“To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles; in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him.”