{"quotes":[{"text":"Since the world is ending,” Peter quoted from behind us, “why not let the children touch the paintings?","author":"Ben Lerner","tags":["children","ending","paintings","world"],"id":19937,"author_id":"Ben+Lerner"},{"text":"Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.","author":"Wassily Kandinsky","tags":["abstraction","art","paintings","science"],"id":31469,"author_id":"Wassily+Kandinsky"},{"text":"We don't see the world as a botanist who is at the same time an architect, a physician, a geologist, and a ship's captain. Recognizing isn't at all like seeing; the two often don't even agree...","author":"Sten Nadolny","tags":["impressionism","paintings","perception"],"id":41332,"author_id":"Sten+Nadolny"},{"text":"On the opposite wall was a Damien Hirst spot painting, bought by Arabella after a decent bonus season. Roger's considered view of the painting, looking at it from aesthetic, art-historical, interior-design, and psychological points of view, was that it had cost forty-seven thousand pounds, plus VAT.","author":"John Lanchester","tags":["art","costs","expenses","paintings","worth"],"id":44787,"author_id":"John+Lanchester"},{"text":"There is nothing to be found in human eyes, and that is their terrifying and dolorous enigma, their abominable and delusive charm. There is nothing but that which we put there ourselves. That is why honest gazes are only to be found in portraits.The faded and weary eyes of martyrs, expressions tortured by ecstasy, imploring and suffering eyes, some resigned, others desperate... The gazes of saints, mendicants and princesses in exile, with pardoning smiles... The gazes of the possessed, the chosen and the hysterical... And sometimes of little girls, the eyes of Ophelia and Canidia, the eyes of virgins and witches... As you live in the museums, what eternal life, dolorous and intense, shines out of you! Like precious stones enshrined between the painted eyelids of masterpieces, you disturb us across time and across space, receivers of the dream which created you!You have souls, but they are those of the artists who wished you into being, and I am delivered to despair and mortification because I have drunk the draught of poison congealed in the irises of your eyes.The eyes of portraits ought to be plucked out.","author":"Jean Lorrain","tags":["decadence","eyes","gaze","honesty","paintings","portraits"],"id":58236,"author_id":"Jean+Lorrain"},{"text":"Outside, the sunlight had turned pale lemon, but the studio remained cool. The white walls and white-tiled splashback behind the sink were made more clinical by the metal tables which looked as if they’d originally been intended for use in an operating theatre. Even though they were laid out with brushes and paints rather than forceps and retractors, the effect was equally daunting; both sets of tools could open you up in strange and unexpected ways.","author":"Christine Stovell","tags":["contemporary-romance","paintings","romantic-comedy"],"id":71229,"author_id":"Christine+Stovell"},{"text":"Aryami Bose's home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and paintings, but the spectre of thousands of memories imprisoned between its walls still permeated the house.","author":"Carlos Ruiz Zafón","tags":["books","home","house","imprisoned","memories","paintings","permeate","spectre","walls"],"id":75971,"author_id":"Carlos+Ruiz+Zaf%C3%B3n"},{"text":"I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a painting and I always proceed from the simple to the complex.' - 1946.","author":"Henri Matisse","tags":["paintings","writing-process"],"id":77096,"author_id":"Henri+Matisse"},{"text":"The wall between writing and painting is just good grammar. Moderation in moderation. Fun is scary with a happy ending. Just love. If love doesn’t transform that which annoys you, it will be easier to tolerate.","author":"Emily Thornton Calvo","tags":["humor","paintings","poems","poetry","quotes","relationships","watercolor"],"id":95054,"author_id":"Emily+Thornton+Calvo"},{"text":"In each painting, I think, it’s as if  God were giving up on finishing the world.","author":"Yves Bonnefoy","tags":["art","creation","paintings"],"id":107316,"author_id":"Yves+Bonnefoy"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":33,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}