Children's Art And Craft Quotes

Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called 'willing suspension of disbelief'. But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.

But my parents understood that the world that they made within the walls of our house was what constituted home. So I grew up in spaces framed by art and color, filled with candlelight, marked by beauty. I grew up within a rhythm of time made sacred by family devotions in the morning and long conversations in the evening. I grew up with the sense of our daily life as a feast and delight; a soup-and-bread dinner by the fire, Celtic music lilting in the shadows, and the laughter of my siblings gave me a sense of the blessedness of love, of God's life made tangible in the food and touch and air of our home. It was a fight for my parents, I know. Every day was a battle to bring order to mess, peace to stressful situations, beauty to the chaos wrought by four young children. But that's the reality of incarnation as it invades a fallen world....What my parents-bless them-knew...is that to make a home right in the midst of the fallen world is to craft out a space of human flesh and existence in which eternity rises up in time, in which the kingdom comes, in which we may taste and see the goodness of God.

On the first day of the arts and crafts class i had nothing really prepared, so i asked everyone to draw themselves. When i looked at the drawings i felt faint. All of the students were Black, yet the drawings depicted a lot of blond-haired, blue-eyed little white children. I was horrified.

Thanks to Azazel a man is able to practice arts and crafts and defend his home. Thanks to Azazel woman was transformed from a submissive bearer of children into an equal human being possessing the freedom to choose—whether to be ugly or beautiful, whether to be a mother or an Amazon, to live for the sake of her family or the whole of mankind.

Taut, intelligent, and intense suspense that is deeply human.”—Mark Greaney, New York Times Bestselling Author of Gunmetal Gray “Exciting and well-layered....David Bell is a master storyteller with a sure hand at crafting characters you feel for and stories you relish.”—Allen Eskens, USA Today Bestselling Author of The Life We Bury “A tense and twisty suspense novel about the dark secrets that lie buried within a community and a father who can save his daughter only by uncovering them. Will leave parents wondering just how well they truly know their children.”—Hester Young, author of The Gates of Evangeline and The Shimmering Road “A gripping, immersive tour-de-force full of twists and turns. BRING HER HOME kept me flipping the pages late into the night. Don’t expect to sleep until you’ve finished reading this book. I could not put it down!”—A. J. Banner, bestselling author of The Good Neighbor and The Twilight Wife “In David Bell’s riveting BRING HER HOME, the unthinkable is only the beginning. From there, the story races through stunning twists all the way to its revelation, without letting its heart fall away in the action. Intense, emotional, and deeply satisfying. This one will keep you up late into the night. Don't miss it!”—Jamie Mason, author of Three Graves Full and Monday’s Lie “Spellbinding and pulse-raising, BRING HER HOME hooked me from the first sentence and surprised me until the final pages. Sharply written and richly observed, this book is about the secrets we keep, the mysteries that keep us, and the lengths a father will go to for the daughter he loves. David Bell is a masterful storyteller who has perfected the art of suspense in BRING HER HOME.”—Sarah Domet, author of The Guineveres

That we never allowed," answered Somel quietly. "Allowed?" I queried. "Allowed a mother to rear her own children?" "Certainly not," said Somel, "unless she was fit for that supreme task." This was rather a blow to my previous convictions. "But I thought motherhood was for each of you--" "Motherhood--yes, that is, maternity, to bear a child. But education is our highest art, only allowed to our highest artists." "Education?" I was puzzled again. "I don't mean education. I mean by motherhood not only child-bearing, but the care of babies." "The care of babies involves education, and is entrusted only to the most fit," she repeated. "Then you separate mother and child!" I cried in cold horror, something of Terry's feeling creeping over me, that there must be something wrong among these many virtues. "Not usually," she patiently explained. "You see, almost every woman values her maternity above everything else. Each girl holds it close and dear, an exquisite joy, a crowning honor, the most intimate, most personal, most precious thing. That is, the child-rearing has come to be with us a culture so profoundly studied, practiced with such subtlety and skill, that the more we love our children the less we are willing to trust that process to unskilled hands--even our own." "But a mother's love--" I ventured. She studied my face, trying to work out a means of clear explanation. "You told us about your dentists," she said, at length, "those quaintly specialized persons who spend their lives filling little holes in other persons' teeth--even in children's teeth sometimes." "Yes?" I said, not getting her drift. "Does mother-love urge mothers--with you--to fill their own children's teeth? Or to wish to?" "Why no--of course not," I protested. "But that is a highly specialized craft. Surely the care of babies is open to any woman --any mother!" "We do not think so," she gently replied. "Those of us who are the most highly competent fulfill that office; and a majority of our girls eagerly try for it--I assure you we have the very best." "But the poor mother--bereaved of her baby--" "Oh no!" she earnestly assured me. "Not in the least bereaved. It is her baby still--it is with her--she has not lost it. But she is not the only one to care for it. There are others whom she knows to be wiser. She knows it because she has studied as they did, practiced as they did, and honors their real superiority. For the child's sake, she is glad to have for it this highest care.

Who can pray this request and mean it? Only he who looks at the whole of life from this point of view. Such a man will not fall into the trap of superspirituality, so concentrating on God’s redemption as to disregard his creation; people like that, however devoted and well-meaning, are unearthly in more senses than one, and injure their own humanity. Instead, he will see everything as stemming ultimately from the Creator’s hand, and therefore as fundamentally good and fascinating, whatever man may have made of it (beauty, sex, nature, children, arts, crafts, food, games, no less than theology and church things). Then in thankfulness and joy he will so live as to help others see life’s values, and praise God for them, as he does. Supremely in this drab age, hallowing God’s name starts here, with an attitude of gratitude for the goodness of the creation.

heartful.   PR: You really did it. Music is an amazing art, to me. I love to recount to myself the number of human beings it takes, each skilled in a different area, to make possible a symphony concert. The composers, and those who copied and preserved the compositions, the instrument makers, skilled at their crafts—tubas, trumpets, timpani, woodwinds, strings—the music teachers who taught the performers, the performers who studied their instruments and practiced and rehearsed, all the builders who erected the concert hall—carpenters, electricians, etc.—the architect who designed it, the conductor who studied, who learned the language of music, the languages of all the instruments, the members of the audience who bought tickets, got dressed, came to the concert hall to be transported, to be informed, by sound, came for an experience that had nothing to do with physical survival. Most amazing. Always makes me certain absolutely without doubt that something is going on with the human species, something good. Two heroes to me are my middle school music teacher and my son’s middle school music teacher. What courage! All those twelve- and thirteen-year-old children, each with a noise-making instrument in his hands and these two enormously courageous teachers are attempting to teach them how to make music together. At my son’s first sixthgrade band concert, the music teacher turned to the audience of glowing, proud parents and said, “I’m not certain what’s going to happen here, but I’m just hoping that we’ll all begin at the same time.” It brought tears to my eyes, literally. And they did it! One step forward, in my opinion, in understanding what it means to be human.

Writing is a Passion, Art is my Dreams, Crafting is something I Enjoy. The day one stops learning is the day one stops living.

No kind of writing lodges itself so deeply in our memory, echoing there for the rest of our lives, as the books that we met in our childhood.

Of the greatest of the gods, the victor of the battle on the Plain of Towers, Lugh Lámhfada, god of all knowledge, patron of all arts and crafts, his name is still known today. But as memory of the mighty warrior, the invincible god, has faded, he is known only as Lugh-chromain, little stooping Lugh of the sídhe, relegated to the role of a fairy craftsman. And, as even the language in which he was venerated has disappeared, all that is left of the supreme god of the Children of Danu is the distorted form of that name Lugh-chromain . . . leprechaun.

In Tsalagi society, before the white man changed who we were and are with their God and their ways, women were of great value in the tribe. We owned all property. We farmed and were in charge of all commerce. All arts and crafts. All children. Men were for use in hunting and battle and war and husbands when the winter was cold, and for as long as they amused or satisfied us. But War Women”—I could hear the capitalization of the words, the importance of them—“War Women were more. They were Beloved. Wise. Stern. Gentle. Demanding. They sat on the council of men as equals, voted in council, fought in wars with their husbands, took their husbands’ place in battle if they fell.

That is their work, they imply, and they also imply that you, and your actual work, are fine but also neglectful and sad. They don’t say that, though. They say, Don’t worry if you can’t be there, at the mid-fall solstice sing-along, the late-winter sledding-song craft fair and potluck. Not a big deal with the mid-spring parent-student doubles badminton under-the-lights evening funmaker. No problem with the mother-daughter pajama party on every third Wednesday movie day Sound of Music bring your own guitar or lyre. No need to bring treats on your child’s birthday. No need to come in for career day. No need to swing by the opening of the new art studio which features real clay-throwing technology. Don’t care about art? Not an issue. No need, no need, no need, it’s fine, no problem, though you really are selfish and your children doomed. When they are first to try crack—they will try it and love it and sell it to our culture-loving children—we will know why.

Believed that art, like literature, was channelled from a higher plane, from the gods, into the chosen ones, the golden children, the touched. Now I understand that it is as much craft as art; that the only gods ruling whether we succeed or fail are our own inner demons. There is no mysticism, no witchcraft. Just hard graft and the ability to ignore the devil who whispers in our ear, you’re not good enough.

Pop art from the sixties lingered on as a movement, mutating and becoming more ironic as it drifted further from its origins. Compared to some of the dour work of the conceptualists and minimalists, one felt that at least these artists had a sense of fun. Warhol, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Lichtenstein, and their kin were about embracing, in a peculiar, ironic way, a world with which we were familiar. They accepted that pop culture was the water in which we all swam. I think I can speak for a lot of the musicians in New York at that time and say that we genuinely liked a lot of pop culture, and that we appreciated workmanlike song craft. Talking Heads did covers of 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Troggs, and Patti Smith famously reworked the über-primitive song “Gloria” as well as the soul song “Land of 1,000 Dances.” Of course, our cover tunes were very different from those we would have been expected to play if we had been a bar band that played covers. That would have meant Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart, Donny & Marie, Heart, ELO, or Bob Seger. Don’t get me wrong, some of them had some great songs, but they sure weren’t singing about the world as we were experiencing it. The earlier, more primitive pop hits we’d first heard on the radio as suburban children now seemed like diamonds in the rough to us. To cover those songs was to establish a link between one’s earliest experience of pop music and one’s present ambitions—to revive that innocent excitement and meaning.