Justin Cartwright Quotes

The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.

I'm always looking for something that tells me a little bit about what it means to be human. That's how I measure the success of any artistic endeavor.

The worldview implied by literary fiction is complex and ambiguous, trying to be faithful to the complexity and ambiguity of life.

Anything that reflects the human condition back on humans in the entertainment medium is art.

Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.

The writing is really important in books that affect me. I read for the writing. The story is usually of less interest to me. It's the words that break your heart.

What makes art powerful is a flash of recognition, a frightening encounter with something familiar about the human condition.

The true artform is being a human being.

The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone

The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.

A good song deals with the human condition, and the truth of the human condition.

Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.

We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We’re aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.

But hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity.

It is the mission of art to remind man from time to time that he is human, and the time is ripe, just now, today, for such a reminder.

A great novelist must open the reader's heart, allow the reader to remember the vastness and glory -- and shame and shabbiness -- of what it is to be human.

One must believe that private dilemmas are, if deeply examined, universal, and so, if expressed, have a human value beyond the private, and one must also believe in the vehicle for expressing them, in the talent.

Poetry is like air. It's one of the necessary things. Everyone benefits from poetry. And as you know, poetry is international. There are only two things that are truly international, poetry and wine.

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.

It makes life so much easier when you can just say 'I'm human' at the end of the day."

Good taste has everything to do with being cultured and being refined, and if art has to do with anything, it has to do with being human.

I hope my books make statements about our general condition.

There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime.