Jonathan Culver Quotes

“With the manipulation of abstract symbols, an artist can send you information without sound, change your feelings and,sometimes, even beliefs. Artists convey the unspeakable. Artists inspire.”

“Artists are agents of chaos. It is the artistsjob to encourage entropy, to promote chaos. Idols must be killed, icons crushed, beliefsshattered. It is the artists job to encourage legitimate, unadulterated, raw thought andemotion. Art that does nothing new, that simply fills an established role, is not art.It is a product. A stale, stagnant product of a disgustingly mundane process that has beendone so much it is assumed mandatory. Little different than feces. The last thing the world needs is to get shittier.”

“i want to never settle for anything less than my soul on paper.”

“i want to bleed ink and shit prose.”

“The English language is a work in progress. Have fun with it.”

“I write because writing is power. Writing is creation. When you write, you are as a god, a deity wielding his pen like some Harry Potter staff, making whatever you want to happen, happen. By sheer force of will and some clever word placement, I can arrange all of these little symbols together to invoke emotions and ideas at a whim out of whosoever allows me to cast my spell. It does not take a man and a woman to create. It just takes a writer.”

“I think it is the duty of all human beings, as intelligent and communicative beings, to learn all the ideas thought up before ours and use them as a means to think up new ones.”

“If it aint broke, break it. Then build something better.”

“Procuring the house in Ballister was a desperate bid for respect, for recognition, the ultimate gesture (or sacrifice, as it turned out) that would prove him a worthy successor to the Flo and Walter Prices of the world. To my mind, the Culver was Norm’s way home, the only way he knew. It was an ever-evolving means to an ever-evolving end that eventually ended him. Who or what led Norm down that thorny path—devotion, economic pressures, family cynicism, Beth’s insatiable appetite—has been a topic of endless debate. You can believe what you want to believe. Personally, I don’t think any rational argument under the sun would have deterred Beth’s “messiah” from his mission. If the Ballister acquisition was Norm’s cross, as everyone seems to think it was, then it was Norm who chose to bear that cross. And pride that nailed him to it.”

“In times of war or peace the US will gladly pay a man to fail should his heart be in it, a small shimmering proof of the American dream.”