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Arthur Phillips Quotes

He had no illusion that this was bittersweet or somehow necessary to make art. It just burned. Anyone who felt this would take their hand off the stove at once, but he was locked in position, inches f...

Arthur Phillips

He had no illusion that this was bittersweet or somehow necessary to make art. It just burned. Anyone who felt this would take their hand off the stove at once, but he was locked in position, inches f...

So why did poor artists originally hang around in cafes?I don't know. Inspiration from the atmosphere.Ha! No, you've been tricked, too, just like the rest of us. Cafes didn't have inspirational atmosp...

Arthur Phillips

So why did poor artists originally hang around in cafes?I don't know. Inspiration from the atmosphere.Ha! No, you've been tricked, too, just like the rest of us. Cafes didn't have inspirational atmosp...

Tags: truth

About Author
Arthur Phillips (born April 23, 1969) is an American novelist. His books include Prague (2002), The Egyptologist (2004), Angelica (2007), The Song Is You (2009), The Tragedy of Arthur (2011), and The King at the Edge of the World (2020).

Love is not sufficient. It never has been. Stories that claim otherwise are lies. There's always SOMETHING after happily ever after.

Arthur Phillips

Love is not sufficient. It never has been. Stories that claim otherwise are lies. There's always SOMETHING after happily ever after.

Tags: happily ever after, love

The strangest thing. I came to the end of other people so quickly. Each new person was like a glass of water, and at the beginning I was parched, but then each glass tasted a little worse, the water w...

Arthur Phillips

The strangest thing. I came to the end of other people so quickly. Each new person was like a glass of water, and at the beginning I was parched, but then each glass tasted a little worse, the water w...

No one ever knew they were old-fashioned; everyone always thought they were up-to-the-minute: Rickety Model T cars weren't rickety when they were invented, scratchy radio wasn't scratchy until televis...

Arthur Phillips

No one ever knew they were old-fashioned; everyone always thought they were up-to-the-minute: Rickety Model T cars weren't rickety when they were invented, scratchy radio wasn't scratchy until televis...

If music can ever restore a lost past, then this was the moment. Redemption! We do crave it. But music is different: we tolerate songs without redemption.

Arthur Phillips

If music can ever restore a lost past, then this was the moment. Redemption! We do crave it. But music is different: we tolerate songs without redemption.

Offstage, she fixed him in place with compliments and ironic bossiness, and he tended not to look at her at all when they spoke. He was the only one in the band she called by name, implying a permanen...

Arthur Phillips

Offstage, she fixed him in place with compliments and ironic bossiness, and he tended not to look at her at all when they spoke. He was the only one in the band she called by name, implying a permanen...

John understood that some things mattered and some things did not and that the happy people in this world were those who could easily and rapidly distinguish between the two. The term unhappiness refe...

Arthur Phillips

John understood that some things mattered and some things did not and that the happy people in this world were those who could easily and rapidly distinguish between the two. The term unhappiness refe...

He might say he had made a mistake in moving to this foreign city—it had seemed like a good idea in California, but now where else could he go?

Arthur Phillips

He might say he had made a mistake in moving to this foreign city—it had seemed like a good idea in California, but now where else could he go?

He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, an...

Arthur Phillips

He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, an...

Shakespeare’s lines are a nursery of titles for other, better writers: Pale Fire, Exit Ghost, Infinite Jest, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Sound and the Fury, Unnatural Acts, The Quick an...

Arthur Phillips

Shakespeare’s lines are a nursery of titles for other, better writers: Pale Fire, Exit Ghost, Infinite Jest, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Sound and the Fury, Unnatural Acts, The Quick an...

You deicde, and you make our night what you want. Brilliant and ours. Stupid and theirs.

Arthur Phillips

You deicde, and you make our night what you want. Brilliant and ours. Stupid and theirs.

Tags: night, ours, stupid

There is no grand scheme of things. That's just a bullshit disguise for cowards. The present has no right to judge the past. Or to act in order to win the future's approval.' (Todd, the marine)

Arthur Phillips

There is no grand scheme of things. That's just a bullshit disguise for cowards. The present has no right to judge the past. Or to act in order to win the future's approval.' (Todd, the marine)

But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its component elements—alimony and acrimony—the songs startled him and rega...

Arthur Phillips

But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its component elements—alimony and acrimony—the songs startled him and rega...

But music is, at the very minimum, inflammatory, exclusionary, divisive, encouraging of snobbery and solipsism.

Arthur Phillips

But music is, at the very minimum, inflammatory, exclusionary, divisive, encouraging of snobbery and solipsism.

Are you still awake?' he might ask in the intimate whisper of 3 a.m. lovers who half arise, warm and happy, to find they have been in someone's company during all those lost hours of sleep.

Arthur Phillips

Are you still awake?' he might ask in the intimate whisper of 3 a.m. lovers who half arise, warm and happy, to find they have been in someone's company during all those lost hours of sleep.

Says the brave and tearful mother hustled over from subconscious central casting when recollection fails.

Arthur Phillips

Says the brave and tearful mother hustled over from subconscious central casting when recollection fails.

And when he finally did break, he would take with him his contagious restlessness and dissatisfaction and guilt, his little gestures and phrases and attitudes that stank of their parents and the past,...

Arthur Phillips

And when he finally did break, he would take with him his contagious restlessness and dissatisfaction and guilt, his little gestures and phrases and attitudes that stank of their parents and the past,...

Nádja was off again, in rare and wondrous form, bewitching her audience with another recollection, exquisitely told, satisfying in its construction, lyrical and glamorous, slightly improbably but nowh...

Arthur Phillips

Nádja was off again, in rare and wondrous form, bewitching her audience with another recollection, exquisitely told, satisfying in its construction, lyrical and glamorous, slightly improbably but nowh...

[he] understood that some things mattered and some things did not and that the happy people in this world were those who could easily and rapidly distinguish between the two.

Arthur Phillips

[he] understood that some things mattered and some things did not and that the happy people in this world were those who could easily and rapidly distinguish between the two.