I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it. Marilynne Robinson
About This Quote

This quote from the great writer and critic, Edmund Wilson, eloquently conveys his feelings about art. The statement may also be a comment on the intellectual climate of the times. In the early part of the 20th century, intellectuals believed that art was a product of genius and therefore, not accessible to the common person. However, during this period, great writers like WIlliam Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce began to write about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Source: The Death Of Adam: Essays On Modern Thought

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More Quotes By Marilynne Robinson
  1. Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.
  2. There's so much to be grateful for, words are poor things.
  3. When something ought to be true then it proves to be a very powerful truth.
  4. I felt, as I have often felt, that my failing the truth could have no bearing at all on the Truth itself, which could never conceivably be in any sense dependent on me or on anyone.
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