The relation between the artist and reality is an oblique one, and indeed there is no good art which is not consciously oblique. If you respect the reality of the world, you know that you can approach that reality only by indirect means.

Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) American poet, literary translator

“The Bottles Become New, Too” (1953), Responses: Prose Pieces, 1953-1976 (1976)
    (Source)

Originally published in Quarterly Review of Literature, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1953).