Jeff Melvoin (b. 1901)

Quotes

• Sexually,we are all competing for the same seat on the bus and the thing that holds it together is the tightly held conceit that we are all sexual gods. How can I believe in my own uniqueness when there's a cat out there exactly the same as me?

• Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops. If I loved her, how could I leave her? If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?

• George Washington had a vision for this country. Was it three days of uninterrupted shopping?

• You think Nature is some Disney movie? Nature is a killer. Nature is a bitch. It's feeding time out there 24 hours a day, every step that you take is a gamble with death. If it isn't getting hit with lightning today, it's an earthquake tomorrow or some deer tick carrying Lime disease. Either way, you're ending up on the wrong end of the food chain.

• You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

• It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

• Talking perceptions, people. Do we really see each other for what we really are, or do we just see what we want to see, the image distorted by our own personal lenses? I lost someone today and the funny thing is, I don't even know who she was.

• Rain usually makes me feel mellow. Curl up in the corner time, slow down, smell the furniture. Today it just makes me feel wet.

• What is it about possessing things? Why do we feel the need to own what we love, and why do we become jerks when we do? We've all been there-- you want something, to possess it. By possessing something you lose it. You finally win the girl of your dreams, the first thing you do is change her. The little things she does with her hair, the way she wears her clothes or the way she chews her gum. Pretty soon what you like, what you changed, what you don't like, blends together like a watercolor in the rain.

• The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself...The act of voting is in itself the defining moment.

• The law is not so much carved in stone as it is written in water, flowing in and out with the tide.

• I'm not judging people, I'm judging their actions. It's the same type of distinction that I try to apply to myself, to judge, but not be judgmental.