I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
Georgia O'KeeffeRead
When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a deep appreciation for the beauty of the world and the sorrow of being unable to witness it after death.
Georgia O'Keeffe expresses a poignant sentiment about mortality and her admiration for the beauty of the world around her. She reflects on the regret of not experiencing the natural landscapes she loves after her passing, while also contemplating the belief in an enduring spirit that can continue to appreciate this beauty even after death. The quote invites readers to consider their relationship with nature and what they value most in life.
In practice
This quote would be powerful in a eulogy to celebrate someone's love for nature.
I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
You are one of my nicest thoughts.
It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it.
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.
Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.
The mystic cannot wholly do without symbol and image, inadequate to his vision though they must always be: for his experience must be expressed if it is to be communicated, and its actuality is inexpressible except in some hint or parallel which will stimulate the dormant intuition of the reader.
Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.
Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
Every time I see the bumper sticker that says “We think we’re humans having spiritual experiences, but we’re really spirits having human experiences,” I (a) think it’s true and (b) want to ram the car.
Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.
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