Chinese Oil Painting

Famous quotes containing the words oil and/or painting:

    “No skilled hands
    caress a stranger’s flesh with lucid oil before
    a word is spoken
    no feasting
    before a tale is told, before
    the stranger tells his name.”
    —Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

    “I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
    —Herman Melville (1819–1891)