22 Quotes On Art


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on abstraction.
“Art is not a thing; it is a way.” – Elbert Hubbard
“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.” – Stephen Sondheim
“All religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree.” – Albert Einstein
“Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.” – Elbert Hubbard
“Art disturbs, science reassures.” – Georges Braque, Le Jour et la nuit
“A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.” – Eugene Ionesco
“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” – Paul Cezanne
“Art is literacy of the heart” – Elliot Eisner
“All art is but imitation of nature.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Great art picks up where nature ends.” – Marc Chagall
“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” – Andre Gide
“The perfection of art is to conceal art.” – Quintilian
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle
“While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality… true art lies in a reality that is felt.” – Odilon Redon
The principle of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.” – Jerzy Kosinski
“That art is best which suggests most.” – Austin O’Malley
“What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things… it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.” – Constantin Brancusi
“Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.” – Khalil Gibran
“The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” – Jonathan Swift
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Edgar Degas
“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.” – Paul Klee
“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” ― Pablo Picasso
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38 Quotes On Abstraction


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on abstraction.
“Abstraction forces you to reach the highest level of the basics.” – Alan Soffer
“Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities.” – Tom G. Palmer
“Abstract literally means to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract… a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.” – Richard Diebenkorn
“To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter. To abstract in art is to separate certain fundamentals from irrelevant material which surrounds them.” – Ben Shahn
“One of the most striking of abstract art’s appearances is her nakedness, an art stripped bare.” – Robert Motherwell
“It was only since the turn of the century that one returned to the immense role that abstraction plays in the human mind by its power of concentration upon absolute essentials.” – S. Giedion
“I understand abstract art as an attempt to feed imagination with a world built through the basic sensations of the eyes.” – Jean Helion
“Painting, like music, has nothing to do with the reproduction of nature, nor interpretation of intellectual meanings. Whoever is able to feel the beauty of colors and forms has understood non-objective painting.” – Hilla Rebay
“What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic – this is by no means the same thing.” – Fernand Leger
“An abstract painting is exactly what it purports to be, whether it be paint splatters or stripes, while a representational painting has to give the illusion of the paint being air, or flesh, or flowers… therefore abstract paintings are rather concrete while representational paintings are rather abstract.” – David Leffel
“The abstract painter considers the realist painter to be the abstract painter and himself the realist because he deals realistically with the paint and does not try to transform it into something that it is not.” – Jimmy Leuders
“Abstract art has helped us to experience the emotional power inherent in pure form.” – Anton Ehrenzweig
“I expect of abstraction as much as what imagery does for me… to carry meaning.” – Kay WalkingStick
“The goal of abstract art is to communicate the intangible, that which eludes the photograph and normal seeing.” – Curtis Verdun
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14 Quotes On Dedication


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on dedication.
“We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.” – Jesse Owens
“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.” – Gail Devers
“Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.” Cecil B. DeMille
“If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride – and never quit, you’ll be a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the rewards.” – Paul Bryant
“I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It’s a voice of pain and victory.” – Anthony Hamilton
“My entire life is dedicated to music, and at my age, that makes a lot of years! But all the work and dedication is only that I’m able to forget myself and let the music do the ‘talking.'” – John McLaughlin
“My secret? A desire to work, years of dedication and loving what you do; I can’t live without music.” – Compay Segundo
“Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe dedicated.” – Unknown Author
“Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.”  – Irving Stone
“There is nothing wrong with dedication and goals, but if you focus on yourself, all the lights fade away and you become a fleeting moment in life.” – Pete Maravich
“Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others.” – Anonymous
“True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.” – Henry Miller
“Dedicate some of your life to others. Your dedication will not be a sacrifice. It will be an exhilarating experience because it is an intense effort applied toward a meaningful end.” – Dr Thomas Dooley
“You’ll know you’re amazing when you get devoted to making other people amazing.” – Robin Sharma
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25 Quotes On Photography


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on photography.
“Photography is the power of observation, not the application of technology.” – Ken Rockwell
“The photographic image … is a message without a code.” – Roland Barthes
“Every photograph is a battle of form versus content. The good ones are on the border of failure.” – Garry Winogrand
“There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.” -Ansel Adams
“When you put four edges around some facts (photographs), you change those facts.” – Garry Winogrand
“The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.” – William Thackeray
“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” –  Aaron Siskind
“To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.” – Ansel Adams
“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”  – Dorothea Lange
“Photography is a major force in explaining man to man” – Edward Steichen
“Your photography is a record of your living” – Paul Strand
“There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” – Ansel Adams
“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”- Ernst Haas
“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.” – Ansel Adams
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” – Robert Capa
“There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.” – Robert Heinecken
“It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.” –  Henri Cartier-Bresson
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt
“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing…” – Henri Cartier Bresson
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” – Dorothea Lange
“It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop …” – Auguste Rodin
“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” – Jean-Luc Godard
“People say photographs don’t lie, mine do.” – David LaChapelle
“Photography is just light remembering itself.” – Jerry Uelsmann
“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” – George Eastman
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18 Quotes On Questions


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on questions.
“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” – Nancy Willard
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” – Decouvertes
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers”  – Voltaire
“Asking the right questions takes as much skill as giving the right answers.” – Robert Half
“To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.” – John Ruskin
“If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer.” – Edward Hodnett
“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” – Tony Robbins
“For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?” – James Allen
“Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.” – Francis Bacon
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” – James Thurber
“I found I wasn’t asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.” – Alan Alda
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.” – Anthony Jay
“We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.” – Bono
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” – Thomas Pynchon
“There are no right answers to wrong questions.” – Ursula K Le Guin
“The one who asks questions doesn’t lose his way.” – African Proverb
“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.” – Engineer’s Motto
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein
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44 Quotes On Story


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on stories.
“I story therefore I am.” – Michael Margolis
“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.” – Mary Catherine Bateson
“We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through words and images siphoning story through our minds the way a fish siphons water through its gills. We cannot think without language, we cannot process experience without story.” – Christina Baldwin
“Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.” – Michael Shermer
“Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.” – Jean Luc Goddard
“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” – Hannah Arendt
“Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives in a world that often defies logic.” – Jim Trelease
“Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything – we need only listen.” -Clarisa Pinkola Estes
“This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.” – Terry Tempest Williams
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” – Joan Didion
“It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.” – Thomas Berry
“Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.” – Mohandas Ghandi
“No matter what you do in your life, what you create, what career you have, whether you have a family or kinds, or make a lot of money … your greatest creation is always going to be the story of your life.” – Jonathan Harris
“If you’re going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all.” – Joseph Campbell
“Australian Aboriginees say that the big stories – the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life – are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting prey in the bush.” – Robert Moss
“If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life.” – Siberian Elder
“We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes … not looking at certain things. Everybody’s got some blind spot.” – Stephen Soderbergh
“A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important.” ― Donald Miller
“Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.” – Ben Okri
“The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story. This truth applies to individuals and institutions.” – Michael Margolis
“Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place.” – Seth Godin
“Those who tell the stories rule the world.” – Hopi Proverb
“Power consists to a large extent in deciding what stories will be told.” ― Carolyn G. Heilbrun
“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.” – Walter Cronkite
“It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.”  – Native American saying
“Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” – African Proverb
“The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question.” – Stephen Jay Gould
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” – Sue Monk Kidd
“Our stories are the tellers of us. ” – Chris Cleave
“Authors do not choose a story to write, the story chooses us.” – Richard Denney
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” – Rudyard Kipling
“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” – Brandon Sanderson
“Stories…are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.” ― Catherynne Valente
“The answer is always in the entire story, not a piece of it.” – Jim Harrison
“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.” – Robert McKee
“What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.” – Robert McKee
“Storytelling may be what most distinguishes social movements from interest groups.” – Marshal Ganz
“Facts don’t persuade, feelings do. And stories are the best way to get at those feelings.” – Tom Asacker
“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.” – Harold Goddard
“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” – James M. Barrie
“Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best – and change – from hearing stories that strike a chord within us … Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.” – John Kotter
“It is the nature of stories to leave out far more than they include.” – Marion Dane Bauer
“Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning.” – John Ruskin
“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.” – Maya Angelou
“If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.” – Barry Lopez
“In the end all we have…are stories and methods of finding and using those stories.” – Roger C. Shank
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20 Quotes On Imagination


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on imagination.
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain
“Imagination is the eye of the soul.” – Joseph Joubert
“The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the imagination.” – Emily Dickinson
“Live out of your imagination, not your history.” – Stephen Covey
“A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.” – Michel de Montaigne
“I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.” – Duane Michals
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein.
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.” – Albert Einstein
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein
“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein
“Without the playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.” –  Carl Jung
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo
“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.” – W Somerset Maugham
“Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?” – Sun Tzu
“Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit, has limited imagination.” – Anonymous
“Nothing limits achievement like small thinking; nothing expands possibilities like unleashed imagination.” — William Arthur Ward
“Imagination rules the world.” – Napoleon
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13 Quotes On Seeing


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on seeing.
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see. ” ― Henry David Thoreau
“What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.” – C.S. Lewis
“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” – John Lubbock
“We will find only what we look for, nothing more and nothing less.” – Anonymous
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer
“Humans see what they want to see.” ― Rick Riordan
“People only see what they are prepared to see.” –  Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” – Henri Bergson
“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” –  Anais Nin
“What you see, you become.” – The Vedas
“A verse from the Veda says, ‘What you see, you become.’ In other words, just the experience of perceiving the world makes you what you are.” – Deepak Chopra
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion – all in one.”  ― John Ruskin
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way.” ― John Ruskin
“To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion – all in one.”  ― John Ruskin
“The more I see, the less I know for sure.”  ― John Lennon
“I shut my eyes in order to see.” –  Paul Gauguin
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19 Quotes On Perception


Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on perception.
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” – Aldous Huxley
“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes” – Marcel Proust
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”  ― William Blake
“Look at everything as though you are seeing it either for the first or last time, then your time on earth will be filled with glory”  ― Betty Smith
“Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.” – George Bernard Shaw
“It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.” – C. W. Leadbeater
“We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.” – Vernon Howard
“All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention.” – Rudolf Arnheim
“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.”  ― Ansel Adams
“Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception–do not confuse them with “facts” or “truth”. Wars have been fought and millions have been killed because of the inability of men to understand the idea that EVERYBODY has a different viewpoint.” – John Moore
“One has not only an ability to perceive the world but an ability to alter one’s perception of it; more simply, one can change things by the manner in which one looks at them.” – Tom Robbins
“What I had to learn was, that I’m responsible for my perception of things.” – Chris Robinson
“We must look at the lens through we see the world, as well as the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.”  ― Stephen R. Covey
“Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.” – Hans Margolis
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” ― W.B. Yeats
“Miracles happen everyday, change your perception of what a miracle is and you’ll see them all around you.” – Jon Bon Jovi
“What the joke displays is a switch in perception. This is important in changing the way we think.” – Edward de Bono
“The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective.” – Al Neuharth
“No perspective, no perception. New perspective, new perception.”  ― Toba Beta
“The new limitations are the human ones of perception.” – Milton Babbitt
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28 Quotes On Play


“Life is the game that must be played.” – Edwin Arlington Robinson
“Look closely and find subtle ways to play in your work. Play breaks up the burden of labor and gives it ananda – deep meaningful joy.” – Thomas Moore
“A person might be able to play without being creative, but he sure can’t be creative without playing.” — Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” – Plato
“It is in playing, and perhaps only in playing, that the child is free to be creative.” – D W Winnicott
“We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the “closed” mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.” — John Cleese
“Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.” – Henri Matisse
“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.” – Roger von Oech
“Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.” – O Fred Donaldson
“It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.” – Leo F. Buscaglia
“The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.” – Richard Bach
“Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.” – Kay Redfield Jamison
“Play is training for the unexpected.” – Marc Bekoff
“Whoever wants to understand much must play much.” – Gottfried Benn
“Deep meaning lies often in childish play.” – Johann Friedrich von Schiller
“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him.” – Pablo Neruda
“When we come together to play and be we are truly ourselves When we are truly ourselves it is wonderful and when we act collectively in that wonder we do transformative work for our community and our world.” – Brad Colby
“Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work.” — James Ogilvy
“Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.” – Abraham Maslow
“Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” – Miles Davis
“Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.” – Charlie Parker
“To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well.” – George Santayana
“If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time” – Chinese Proverbs
“There is work that is work and there is play that is play; there is play that is work and work that is play. And in only one of these lies happiness.” – Gelett Burgess
“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.” – Mark Twain
“A child loves his play, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.” – Benjamin Spock
“Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.” – Heraclitus
“Life must be lived as play.” – Plato
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