Quote #54

An artist doesn't live in some geographical abstraction,superimposed on a part of this beautiful earth by the nonimagination of unanimals and dedicated to the proposition that massacre is a social virtue because murder is an individual vice. Nor does an artist live in some soi-disant world,nor does he live in some so-called universe,nor does he live in any number of 'worlds' or in any number of 'universes.' As for a few trifling delusions like the 'past' and 'present' and 'future' of quote mankind unquote,they may be big enough for a couple of billion supermechanized submorons but they're much too small for one human being.

More from E. E. Cummings

  1. concerning this selfstyled world's greatest and most generous literary figure: who had just arrived in our nation's capitol, attired in hal…
  2. Every artist's strictly illimitable country is himself. An artist who plays that country false has committed suicide;and even a good lawyer…
  3. The one...thing which mattered about any poem (so ran my second poetic period's credo) was what the poem said; it's socalled meaning.... Th…
  4. the courage to receive time's mightiest dream
  5. poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality....poetry is being, not doing…
  6. no evil is so worse than worst you fall in hate with love -human one mortally immortal i can turn immense all time's because to why
  7. more each particular person is(my love) alive than every world can understand and now you are and i am now and we're a mystery that will ne…
  8. though mankind persuades itself that every weed's a rose,roses(you feel certain) will only smile

All E. E. Cummings quotes