Quote: Ray Bradbury

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

Faber from the seminal Fahrenheit 451, one of Bradbury’s few full-length novels. I won’t pretend to have all the answers, but to me, this is what art is. Some time ago, in a pique of creativity, I wrote some similar words:

“Art is an attempt to portray truth. All art is a medium—painting, sculpture, photography, writing. Writing? Skilled writing may help deliver the message, but that is neither a necessity nor a guarantee. A well-written piece that reveals nothing of reality, does not show a glimpse of human life, is nothing but a diversion. Likewise, writing that is less polished but has the ability, the gift to resonate on the wavelength of true existence, to match the chord that is truth and make us stop, ponder, and say, ‘Yes, that is how it is, though I have never understood it’—that is truly writing. Thus a painting may be lauded as a masterpiece though it seems devoid of skill or mastery, while another is accepted as well-rendered but only reluctantly called ‘art.’ Also thus can one lens be considered artistic by some parties while others call it useless; not all men are the same, and like glasses fit to the wrong eyes, some art will only give focus to those whom it speaks to.”