Arthur Phillips
Arthur Phillips
Arthur Phillipsis an American novelist. His books include Prague, The Egyptologist, Angelica, The Song Is You, and The Tragedy of Arthur...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 April 1969
CountryUnited States of America
music-is minimum snobbery
But music is, at the very minimum, inflammatory, exclusionary, divisive, encouraging of snobbery and solipsism.
art common truth-is
The truth is, anyone who puts so much of herself and her life into art as you do must naturally fear any failure in that art as a potential threat to your life. And so you protect your art more than you protect your health or the common forms of happiness the rest of us have. And you probably have this in common with every artist you admire.
develop fit good labeled objective produced standard therefore whether
I'm an aesthetic empiricist. If you like something, it doesn't matter who made it. There really is no objective standard other than your own taste. You develop your own tastes, you find things that do or do not fit your tastes, and therefore are or are not 'good.' Whether they have been labeled as produced by the right person is another matter.
exaggerate hard larger
It would be hard to exaggerate Ernest Hemingway's influence over American literature, but his influence on our lives is probably larger still.
human mind
I do worry that it's impossible to write something original, that there's nothing that a human hasn't already thought of. But I can put it out of my mind and get on with what I'm doing.
gets justified market memoir needs readers rid
The memoir industry is, what's the word? Under regulated. I think it needs to be pruned. If there are too many books right now and the market for readers is shrinking, I think we can get rid of many of the memoirs. Another memoir should be awfully well justified before it gets published.
art convey convincing fiction great life mystery
Fiction is able to do one thing better than any other art form: it is able to convey a convincing sense of what is going on in someone else's head. To me, that is the great mystery of life: what is everyone else thinking?
fall reflection night
He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, and each haloed light-in a tower or strung along the jeweled and sprawling spider legs of the Brooklyn Bridge's spans-hinted at some meaning, which could be understood only when made audible by music and encoded in lyrics.
location easier ifs
It was so much easier to be alone, if one could find just the right location.
resolve stable conditions
How much of life could he spend aching? Aching is not a stable condition; it must resolve into something
lying love-is stories
Love is not sufficient. It never has been. Stories that claim otherwise are lies. There's always SOMETHING after happily ever after.
glasses water people
The strangest thing. I came to the end of other people so quickly. Each new person was like a glass of water, and at the beginning I was parched, but then each glass tasted a little worse, the water was grittier, and by the end even the first sip was enough to make me gag, you know?
stupid night want
You deicde, and you make our night what you want. Brilliant and ours. Stupid and theirs.
order contemplation arrangements
There are few things more pleasing than the contemplation of order and useful arrangement.