Quotes from Tracy Daugherty

Male novelists were granted a 'social tradition' in which to operate, Didion discovered 'hard drinkers, bad livers, wives, wars, big fish, Africa, Paris, no second acts.

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult," he said, "but because it wishes to be art.

W]hat an artist does is fail," he writes. "The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition . . . there is no such thing as a 'successful artist.

I loved idiot paintings, tops of doors, decors, saltimbanques, canvases, signboards, popular engravings, obsolete literature, church Latin, badly-spelled pornographic works, novels by our grandmothers, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, folk refrains, popular rhythms. —Rimbaud, "A Season in Hell