When I look at an image, it doesn't occur to me that it might ruin my composure, or alter the way I think, or change my mind about myself.

I do some background reading and take some notes. That way I come at a painting well armed with thoughts and problems. Each idea from a book is like a little tranquilizer.

"The painter will move to laughter, but not to tears, for tears are greater disturbance of the emotion than laughter." Leonardo's Paragon.

Why is it ok to cry over a movie and not a painting? Is this not art too? Why don't images provoke the mind?

Our society is so numb.

For them the eyes are intellectual organs, made for scrutinizing the world, and the mind's business is to keep control of passions. But ascetics forget that in addition to seeing, the eye is an organ that cries; and in addition to thinking, the mind is an organ that slumps into a miasma of confusion, or burns up in a storm of incomprehensible passions.

A few art historians who wrote me did express unhappiness about the fact that they had never cried. It's mostly things like..'Oh, how wonderful!' … or else they are just discussing the details of the picture, or trying to find out what the symbols mean, or other technical stuff.

I feel bothered by crowds around me. I hate to have to share all the beautiful paintings with other people.

Like a drug, history takes me out of myself, saves me from myself. It shelters me from the raw, unpredictable encounter with artworks: It's safe, it's calm, and it's entertaining. It's very pleasure. It has all the traits of a deadly drug.

History is an addiction, and there is no cure.

-James Elkins

For the most wild yet homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad I would be to expect it. In a case where my very senses reject their own existence Yet mad am I not. And very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die and to-day I would unburden my soul.

When there's a problem, I like to address it and solve it. That doesn't always work in the, "real world." Humans are very complicated creators. Females and males sometimes don't get along. People don't always get along. Individuality questions its self to find the inner being. This is apart of our nature. The individual can even argue with his/her self with out being perceived as crazy. My point, diplomacy works. But who has time for more paper work and long lectures? We run off of feelings; these emotions can drive us to great ambitions or heart aces. They are apart of our chemical balance that makes us unique. With so many different people there will always be problems in this universe; we can't grasp the concept of what we are without knowing who we are. Our species dominates this planet but when communication ends in any level of society we fail.