Quotes from Letters to a Young Artist

“We who are in the arts are at the risk of being in a popularity contest rather than a profession. If that fact causes you despair . . . pick another profession. Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities . . . We have to create our own standards of discipline.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, quote from Letters to a Young Artist

“You are an explorer. You understand that every time you go into the studio, you are after something that does not yet exist.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, quote from Letters to a Young Artist

“Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you. Go for that communion, that real communion with your soul, and the discipline of expressing that communion with others. That doesn't come from competition. That comes from being one with what you are doing.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, quote from Letters to a Young Artist

“Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, quote from Letters to a Young Artist

“My job in my work is not to acquire power; it's to question power.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, quote from Letters to a Young Artist

“Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, quote from Letters to a Young Artist

“Art requires that you make something else exist that is a representation of what your feeling is, or your idea.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, quote from Letters to a Young Artist

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Popular quotes

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“Dušo, znam da imaš posla i znam da će biti opasno, ali u što god da se danas uvališ, neće biti ni približno tako opasno po život kao ono što će se dogoditi ako mi ikad više napraviš ono što si mi radio sinoć i nakon toga zaključiš da se drugo jutro možeš izvući sa rukovanjem. Dobro?”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Fallen

“Now we will live!” This is what the hungry little boy liked to say, as he toddled along the quiet roadside, or through the empty fields. But the food that he saw was only in his imagination. The wheat had all been taken away, in a heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe’s era of mass killing. It was 1933, and Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Soviet Ukraine. The little boy died, as did more than three million other people. “I will meet her,” said a young Soviet man of his wife, “under the ground.” He was right; he was shot after she was, and they were buried among the seven hundred thousand victims of Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. “They asked for my wedding ring, which I….” The Polish officer broke off his diary just before he was executed by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He was one of about two hundred thousand Polish citizens shot by the Soviets or the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, while Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly occupied his country. Late in 1941, an eleven-year-old Russian girl in Leningrad finished her own humble diary: “Only Tania is left.” Adolf Hitler had betrayed Stalin, her city was under siege by the Germans, and her family were among the four million Soviet citizens the Germans starved to death. The following summer, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Belarus wrote a last letter to her father: “I am saying good-bye to you before I die. I am so afraid of this death because they throw small children into the mass graves alive.” She was among the more than five million Jews gassed or shot by the Germans.”
― Timothy Snyder, quote from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

“Are not they temperate from a kind of intemperance?”
― Plato, quote from Phaedo

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.