The Essential Margin of Nonconformity
In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.
~ Luis Buñuel Portolés
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But you have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.
~ DH Lawrence
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when I think of the things I endured trying to be a writer
all those rooms in all those cities,
nibbling on tiny bits of food that wouldn’t keep a rat alive.
I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades,
only I seldom had bread …
each new landlady would ask,
“what do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“oh …
~ Charles Bukowski
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