Quotes from Robert Irwin

If you wanted to watch me work, it would be totally boring. It would look like a Warhol film where nothing happens. I sit for 24 hours, then I scratch myself.

Whenever you look at light, basically it's just air. It has no tactileness to it. It's totally without density.

In the realm of the phenomenal, "less is more" only when less is the sum total of more.

The inner meaning of history . . . involves speculation and an attempt to get at the truth, subtle explanation of the causes and origins of existing things, and deep knowledge of the how and why of events. (History,) therefore, is firmly rooted in philosophy. It deserves to be accounted a branch of (philosophy).

Weirdness is beauty, beauty weirdness.

Averroes, the last of the great medieval Arab philosophers, was fighting a rearguard defense of philosophy that was under attack from theologians, and, though translations of his works were to be much read in the universities of Christian Europe, he had little influence on later generations of thinkers in the Muslim world.

it seems clear that Ibn Khaldun preferred al-Ghazali to Averroes. "He who wants to arm himself against the philosophers in the field of dogmatic beliefs should turn to the works of al-Ghazali.

Ibn Khaldun discussed the calculations of the ninth-century astrologer and polymath al-Kindi regarding the predestined end of the 'Abbasid dynasty.

Magic is absurd. It is a system of thinking that does not work and does not get one anywhere," said the friar. "It works, but it does not get one anywhere," said Vance. "But it is very beautiful. Magic is an art that pleases the eye and the ear," said Bulbul.

The Christian, when he had calmed down sufficiently, admitted that the riddle was good. "I have created something cleverer than myself," he cried.' Here Yoll interrupted himself. 'I do not understand his astonishment, for who has not heard of a storyteller who is stupider than the story he invents?

Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.

The student of story collections finds himself adrift on an ocean of stories, an ocean which is boundless, deep and ceaselessly in motion.

History is nothing but the lies we tell about our ancestors

the fantastical and damned Iram City of the Columns reappeared in some of the stories of the twentieth-century horror writer H. P. Lovecraft

contrast with, say, Whig historians, such as Macaulay in nineteenth-century England, is striking. The Arab historians had no belief in the progress of humanity. Instead they waited for God to declare the End of Time.

But things are not what they seem. The normal Arabic word for "philosophy" was and is falasifa and a "philosopher" is a faylasuf. Plato was a faylasuf and so were Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, and al-Farabi. But the word that Rosenthal has translated as "philosophy" in the passage quoted above is hikma, and hikma has a subtly different range of meaning.

Flying is only a figure for something else. If you cannot succeed here at this, then you will fail elsewhere at other things. You must strengthen your will, for you do not need a master. In truth, you have too many masters. It is being said that everyone is your master.

Then he recited to the still very groggy Sultan the old Arab proverb, 'He that sleeps one-third of the night has done as well as he that sleeps half the night, and he that sleeps all night will awaken an idiot.

Every time you do something, make something, it's final in a way, but it's not. It immediately raises a great set of questions. And if you become a question addict, which I am, you immediately have something you need to pursue.

If I hold up a red square for 30 seconds and take it away, you will see a perfect green square. It's how the eye works. So if you want to paint a really good red painting, you have to strategically place in some green, so the eye is brought back.

We actually form the world at every instant, although we're not cognitively aware of that but - and there are people would argue with that to some degree.

The whole thrust of modern art, as far as I understand it, is expanding the role of the artist as a kind of esthetician, someone who actually spends his time, is trained in a way to deal with qualities.

I slowly dismantled the act of painting, to consider the possibility that no-thing ever really transcends its immediate environment.

For the next week, try the best you can to pay attention to sounds. You will start hearing all these sounds coming in. Once you let them in, you've already done the first and most critical thing, you've honored that information by including it. And by doing that, you've actually changed the world.