33 Quotes by Anne Truitt

A mystery confounds the problem of industry in art. In the last analysis, to work is simply not enough. But we have to act as if it were, leaving reward aside.

It is ultimately character that underwrites art.

I never decided at all to be an artist; being an artist seems to have happened to me.

The shape of my work’s development becomes a little clearer every time I am forced to articulate it.

The art of being officially old seems to lie in cooperative submission.

No one questions the fact that verbal language has to be learned, but the commonplaceness of visual experience betrays art; people tend to assume that, because they can see, they can see art.

I come to the point of using steel, and simply cannot. It’s like the marriage proposal of a perfectly eligible man who just isn’t loveable. It is wood I love.

I had forgotten what sleep is like – a kingdom all its own.

I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.