David Antin Quotes

Quotes about:

• From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.

  David Antin

  May, Entertainment, Language

  45 Copy quote

• The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.

  David Antin

  Running, Past, Self

  8 Copy quote

• The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

  David Antin

  Memories, Anxiety, Greek

  "A Conversation with David Antin". Book by David Antin, Charles Bernstein, 2002.

  17 Copy quote

• I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.

  David Antin

  Writing, Thinking, Writing Poems

  5 Copy quote

• I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.

  David Antin

  Together, Kind, Process

  16 Copy quote

• I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

  David Antin

  Fundamentals, Pursuit, Theory

  11 Copy quote

• I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.

  David Antin

  Sacred, Casual, Secular

  9 Copy quote

• I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.

  David Antin

  Giving Up, Understanding, Trying

  8 Copy quote

• An art machine is a system
  whose parts when put in motion
  act upon each other in such a way
  as to cause you to see things differently

  David Antin

  Art, Machines, Way

  David Antin, John Cage (2005). “John Cage Uncaged Is Still Cagey”

  5 Copy quote

• My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it.

  David Antin

  Ideas, Rejection, Entertainment

  7 Copy quote

• I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.

  David Antin

  Strong, Feelings, Liberty

  4 Copy quote

• I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out.

  David Antin

  Dog, Giving, Stories

  8 Copy quote

• My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.

  David Antin

  Thinking, Way, Path

  7 Copy quote

• There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

  David Antin

  Editing, Jazz Improvisation, Procedures

  8 Copy quote

• When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.

  David Antin

  Growing Up, Fluency, Language

  66 Copy quote

• I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore.

  David Antin

  Experts, Want, Range

  7 Copy quote

• You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.

  David Antin

  Choices, Pay, Language

  4 Copy quote

• My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldnt understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer.

  David Antin

  Mother, Widows, Chickens

  7 Copy quote

• When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.

  David Antin

  Mother, Husband, Appreciate

  8 Copy quote

• For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.

  David Antin

  Song, Circles, Corny

  8 Copy quote

• I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.

  David Antin

  Hebrew, Remember, Enough

  16 Copy quote

• While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

  David Antin

  Song, Thinking, Speech

  4 Copy quote

• I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go.

  David Antin

  Thinking, Want, Welcome

  5 Copy quote

• I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate.

  David Antin

  Distinction, Unsatisfied

  7 Copy quote

• While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.

  David Antin

  Thinking, Giving, Use

  52 Copy quote

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