Word: stranger
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Copper Kettle was written in 1953 as part of my opera Go Lightly Stranger...
...each brush stroke an effort of will. What was so unusual about Renoir was the grace with which he bore the weight of genius. He married once and well, reigned without thunder as the head of a large, adoring household, and could always take time to speak to a stranger or persuade a beggar to accept a gift. He was, of course, frequently taken advantage of; after his paintings began to sell, chiselers took up the habit of bringing obvious Renoir forgeries to his door, knowing that he would obligingly "correct"-that is. repaint-the canvases and give them back...
Mark Twain's dazzling Missouri humor always had hints of despair. Dark brooding crept into such cheerful works as The Innocents Abroad and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; it filled later works like The Mysterious Stranger, virtually blotting out all gaiety. The last writing Twain did, in 1909, was such a lugubrious assault on man and God that Twain's surviving daughter, Clara Samossoud, refused to let it be published. In this, she followed the half-jesting advice of Twain himself. "Tomorrow," he wrote William Dean Howells, "I mean to dictate a chapter which will get my heirs...
...love than he did of me, even though he was cursing me. Surely, he was obsessed by me." The hero is convinced that B. needs him as much as he needs B.: "He was as uncertain and wavering as myself. Gripped by the fear of being a stranger to himself, he has raised up an adversary, me, and has painted my image on the wall, as the old painters painted their icons with sweating hands when their demon took possession of them...
...works by 52 sculptors enlivened its streets and piazzas. David Smith has donated a circle pierced by a swirling, wavelike bar, supported by a pair of pincers ("It has more grace than most of my work, so I thought it belonged there"); Lynn Chadwick's batlike, three-legged Stranger III will remain on the ramp leading up from the duomo; Nino Franchini's leaping spire of torn steel will stay on the spot where it was made, a cleft between two ancient houses...