Jenova Chen Quotes

Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.

I would love to be a Franciscan brother. I'm just not sure I have the courage to do it.

I would've liked to have been Poussin, if I'd had a choice, in another time.

I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight.

I wanted to make pictures where you would not know who took them. I also bring the present into the past.

Writing history takes a great deal of imagination. I don’t mean making things up, but you have to be able to transport yourself to another time.

I like going back in time and writing historical fantasy. I use some real historical characters as a background to give depth to the fantasy. And I throw my fictional characters into the midst of this, and, so far, it has turned out interesting.

I feel really connected to antiquity for some reason.

Indeed the influence of music on the development of religion is a subject which would repay a sympathetic study.

... a woman who has been a nun is never anything else.

I loved nuns when I was growing up. I thought they were beautiful. For several years I wanted to be a nun. I saw them as really pure, disciplined, above average people. They had these serene faces. Nuns are sexy.

A musician, an artist, an architect: the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.

I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.

The question isn't 'Do we worship?' The question is 'Who (or what) do we worship?'

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

[Albert] Hoxie, my Western Civilization professor. I had him in my freshman year and he opened up an extraordinary world to me that I've never forgotten. He used his extensive knowledge of art history to illustrate the development of Western culture and politics.

The talents of an artist, small or great, are God-given. They've nothing to do with the private person; they're nothing to be proud of. They're just a sacred trust... Having been given, I must give. Man shall not live by bread alone, and what the farmer does I must do. I must feed the people - with my songs.

Even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

Great occasions for serving God come seldom, but little ones surround us daily.

I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.

Last time I checked, there were no Americans at all in Renaissance art.

In all your prayers forget not to thank the Lord for his mercies.

Whatever call a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry.