Hogarth Quotes

Real smoker's fingers aren't scared of the burning embers; their fingers coexist with it. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Because I'm evil, that's why. I'm an evil monster, two at once all the time and both evil. That's why. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Eyeglasses and teeth: both breakable, valuable things that you have to carry with you all the time. Hanging there precariously like earrings without backings, threatening to fall out, chip off, crack to the quick because of some innocent nut or seed or beer bottle. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

You're nothing but an intruder. A germ. A piece of sand agitating my oyster. But you're not a pearl; you're a tumor or a wart or a cyst. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

The bathroom was the place to do strange, socially unacceptable things. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Such indeed was her image, that neither could Shakespeare describe, nor Hogarth paint, nor Clive act, a fury in higher perfection. ~ Henry Fielding

I've sold shoes, hawked newspapers, jerked sodas, gazed rapturously at the tinsel dream at the end of a runway from my usher's aisle in a burley-cue, drove a truck - then because I didn't like being pushed around, started pushing a pencil around. ~ Burne Hogarth

We must all guard against the human weakness of forming into tribes in order to lift our self-esteem. We can feel good about ourselves without having to find someone else to classify as inferior. ~ Steve Hogarth

She wanted to be as still as they, wanted to be drawn into the dirt and reborn a million times, at the same time, like each little blade of smooth grass. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

It's odd the way that things tend to stop looking like themselves when you take their motion away. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

but the soul of a woman emits an energy men will never comprehend. We (women) are the magnets that pull existence together, from the core of the family, to the network of acquaintances you'll make. We all exchange the flow of love on what we call Mother earth, with her gravitational pull keeping us all grounded. You'll notice all encapsulating existences, and even vessels, are given a feminine gender. The earth and her land masses, the oceans and the seas, and ships, for instance. All are referred to as female entities. ~ Darren Hogarth

Why invite sorrow? Life is long enough to contain enough without asking for more. ~ M.C.A. Hogarth

Hell is a library," she said, tightening her fresh knot.

"That really doesn't sound bad, Julia."

"That's because I'm not finished. Hell is a library of books containing every word you've ever said, and videotapes of everything you've ever done."

"So what. Do you have to watch them?"

"No, you don't have to. But would you be able to help yourself? It would be unbearable. I couldn't resist, but I would hate myself after." She gave the noose two good, hard tugs. "Plus, even if you could resist the temptation, you'd eventually get so bored that you'd do anything. And the only thing to read is stuff that you've said and the only thing to do is watch yourself. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Straight lines vary only in length, and therefore are least ornamental. ~ William Hogarth

The serpentine line, or the line of grace, by its waving and winding at the same time different ways, leads the eye in a pleasing manner along the continuity of its variety. ~ William Hogarth

Time had her by the throat, and the more she squirmed the tighter it gripped. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

The limitations of archaeology are galling. It collects phenomena, but hardly ever can isolate them so as to interpret scientifically; it can frame any number of hypotheses, but rarely, if ever, scientifically prove. ~ David George Hogarth

I excel at withholding. Resisting. Denying satisfaction. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

To behave creatively in art means behavior with skill; and skill comes from discipline, not derangement. The artist who knows the rules -and proportion is one of them- knows where to bend and how to break them. ~ Burne Hogarth

Books are like people. They can be beautiful on the outside and it's wonderful when they are, but what counts is the inside. And the inside of a book can be communicated in a dozen different ways, and cheaply enough that everyone can have access. And everyone should. ~ M.C.A. Hogarth

The problem is, you can't fake dead hands. That invisible something that fills dead or sleeping hands, making them appear strange and inanimate, is impossible to imitate. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

when I stare at myself for a really long time, I stop looking human. The way that a word starts to seem unreal as you repeat it, my face unravels. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Quivering eyelids closed over wild eyeballs. Paddleball heartbeat, awake beneath the costume of sleep. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

I'm the reasons that partners have to be assigned in school instead of chosen, or why teachers have to pick the teams in gym class instead of letting kids separate on their own. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Simplicity, without variety, is wholly insipid. ~ William Hogarth

The volcanic bubbling of everything in one pan made it very difficult to hear a crying child on the doorstep. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Goddammit. I hate when crying just happens to you Like when you're being yelled at by someone or you're very nervous, there's a hostile takeover of your face and chest and all of a sudden you're a crying baby. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

That's what fresh babies look like. You should see it. Horrific. Your vagina rips in two and this purpled, wrinkled creature comes flying out. And you're stuck with it. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Survival is a growth strategy. ~ Ian Hogarth

The sheer vital energy of the Woolfs always astonishes me when I stop to consider what they accomplished on any given day. Fragile she may have been, living on the edge of psychic disturbance, but think what she managed to do nonetheless -- not only the novels (every one a breakthrough in form), but all those essays and reviews, all the work of the Hogarth Press, not only reading mss. and editing, but, at least at the start, packing the books to go out!

And besides all that, they lived such an intense social life. (When I went there for tea, they were always going out for dinner and often to a party later on.) The gaiety and the fun of it all, the huge sense of life! The long, long walks through London that Elizabeth Bowen told me about. And two houses to keep going! Who of us could accomplish what she did?

There may be a lot of self-involvement in A Writer's Diary, but there is no self-pity (and what has to be remembered is that what Leonard published at that time was only a small part of all the journals, the part that concerned her work, so it had to be self-involved). It is painful that such genius should evoke such mean-spirited response at present. Is genius so common that we can afford to brush it aside? What does it matter if she is major or minor, whether she imitated Joyce (I believe she did not), whether her genius was a limited one, limited by class? What remains true is that one cannot pick up a single one of her books and read a page withou ~ May Sarton

Sometimes I feel like I'm disappearing. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

After all, what is it?- this indescribable something which men will persist in terming "genius"? I agree with Buffon- with Hogarth- it is but diligence after all.
Look at me!- how I labored- how I toiled- how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word "ease." By day I adhered to my desk, and at night, a pale student, I consumed the midnight oil. You should have seen me- you should. I leaned to the right. I leaned to the left. I sat forward. I sat backward. I sat tete baissee (as they have it in the Kickapoo), bowing my head close to the alabaster page. And, through all, I- wrote. Through joy and through sorrow, I-wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I-wrote. Through good report and through ill report- I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I-wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. The style!- that was the thing. I caught it from Fatquack- whizz!- fizz!- and I am giving you a specimen of it now. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

No wonder serial killers liked to chop up women," Julia said. "They seem so much better when they're just bits and pieces. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Once you've spit something out, you can't eat it back up again. People don't forget. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

parents are just as responsible for your death as they are for your birth. They set you on the tangent along which you inevitably die. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

But the period I studied -- the rollicking eighteenth century engraved by Hogarth -- was the one that saw the birth of America, of women's rights, and of the novel. The novel started as a low-class form, fit only to be read by serving maids, and it is the only literary form where women have distinguished themselves so early and with such excellence that even the rampant misogyny of literary history cannot erase them. Ever wonder about women and the novel? Women, like any underclass, depend for their survival on self-definition. The novel permitted this -- and pages could still be hidden under the embroidery hoop.
From the writer's mind to the reader's there was only the intervention of printing presses. You could stay at home, yet send your book abroad to London -- the perfect situation for women.
In a world where women are still the second sex, many still dream of becoming writers so they can work at home, make their own hours, nurse the baby. Writing still seems to fit into the interstices of a woman's life. Through the medium of words, we have hopes of changing our class. Perhaps the pen will not always be equated with the penis. In a world of computers, our swift fingers may yet win us the world. One of these days we'll have class. And so we write as feverishly as only the dispossessed can. We write to come into our own, to build our houses and plant our gardens, to give ourselves names and histories, inventing ourselves as we go along. ~ Erica Jong

She wanted to find a loose thread in the twilight. Pull it. See what shined so brightly behind it, through the snags. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

but maybe, also, she doesn't know how to talk to us because she's so weird. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Hers was the only face I could see right now, the only voice I could bear to hear. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

You don't want to be pitied."

"Why not?"

"I don't really know, but I know that you don't want it. No one ever wants anyone else's pity. In the movies anyway. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

an attempt at effortlessness is a paradox at the very least. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

All the world is competent to judge my pictures except those who are of my profession. ~ William Hogarth

hands were always the worst giveaway in a pretend sleep attempt, sleeping hands being impossible to fake. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

I had rather, if cruelty has been prevented by the four prints [The Four Stages of Cruelty], be maker of them than of the [Raphael] cartoons. ~ William Hogarth

Real teacups are too small. No room for sloshing around so they're impossible to carry anywhere. Those cups force you to sit and be seated and do nothing but sip. Maybe that's why ladies in Victorian movies are never DOING anything. Bound to the table by their teacups. Bound to the table by THE THREAT OF MESS. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

From day one I was an inconvenience. But apparently I was a very cute baby so that helped my case a bit. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Just to warn you, I die at the end of all of this. So don't get too attached to me or anything. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Soda pop and cotton candy and every face you've never noticed. ~ Ainslie Hogarth