Art, he said, was a controlled madness... He said that books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.

Steven Millhauser
About This Quote

The novelist Richard Yates said that art is a controlled madness, an obsession that takes you over. Richard Yates believed that art is not made of themes but of images that inserts itself into our brain and replaces what we are seeing with our eyes. Richard Yates was also influenced by William Faulkner, a famous author of the same time. In the short story "A Rose for Emily", William Faulkner explained his own writing process as follows: "I write from the point of view of the characters I am creating…I write from their point of view…I am trying to make my characters see and feel as I do myself".

Source: Dangerous Laughter

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