Line

Famous quotes containing the word line:

    What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model.... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.
    Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)

    I love them
    for finding what
    I can’t find,
    and for loving me
    for the line I wrote,
    and for forgetting it....
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

    What comes over a man, is it soul or mind
    That to no limits and bounds he can stay confined?
    You would say his ambition was to extend the reach
    Clear to the Arctic of every living kind.
    Why is his nature forever so hard to teach
    That though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
    There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed?
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)