Jerzy Kosinski's Motto
The principle of art is to pause, not bypass. The principles of true
art is not to portray, but to evoke. This requires a moment of pause--a
contract with yourself through the object you look at or the page you read.
In that moment of pause, I think life expands. And really the purpose of
art--for me, fiction--is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain
that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might
have had, or might still have. That is the moment of finding something
which you have not known about yourself, or your environment, about others
and about life.
Source: Kosinski, Jerzy. Passing By. New York: Grove, 1991.