Quotation of the Week

I was so incredibly out-of-my-mind busy last week with a Brave Writer deadline and starting our home school on Tuesday (and not having half my books -- what I wouldn't give for a Sonlight Brit Lit Instructor's Guide and an ABeka Economics and American Government set! Poor Elizabeth is functioning with only one class right now for her senior year until I can get her books. The boys' math workbooks can wait as they can finish their workbooks from last year, even though they're rather drowning as Jonathan gasps through algebra and Benjamin flails his way through fractions and double-digit multiplication with NO gentle review that allows them to slide slowly into the mathematics whirlpool to acclimate. Nope, they've been flung into the deep end with nary a floatie. Poor babies).

Anywhoooo, I was so incredibly busy that posting my usual Quotation of the Week never happened. And this week as I thumb through my quotation copybook, I am drawn to quotations on art. So here they are -- enjoy!

"I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things."
-- Henri Matisse

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather seen."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better."
-- Andre Gide

I love quotations. I love reading them, and I love copying them into my little copybook. When I find a sentence or two that sparkle on the page -- or on the computer screen -- I suck in my breath and reach for my rosewood dip pen with the steel nib and my bottle of ink. Removing the cork of the glass bottle of sepia ink, I carefully dip the nib into the swirling ink to the precise depth of maximum writing without blots, bring the nib to the thick white paper, and start letting ink flow into words and letters. The satisfaction when the quotation is copied in old-fashioned sepia ink sends wriggles of joy up my spine. Joy. Yes, joy.

Words are my tools, and I love them -- when they are assembled into the perfect order, it's simply magic.