Quotes About Artifice

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

A garden, as far as Teddy could see, was nature tamed and constrained by artifice.

Most of what we consider beauty is manufactured, but the fact of that manufacture does not make it unbeautiful.

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

Dear Marie Tussaud, Fake people are everywhere, you do not have to waste wax creating them

And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality. And so art is dead, not only because its critical transcendence is gone, but because reality itself, entirely impregnated by an aesthetic which is inseparable from its own structure, has been confused with its own image. Reality no longer has the time to take on the appearance of reality. It no longer even surpasses fiction: it captures every dream even before it takes on the appearance of a dream.

I am a skeleton. I have a skull with an artifice of fire in its eyes.

He, the true writer, is the department store dummy at the very center of the whole establishment, the one left alone on display all night, a price tag stapled to every piece of clothing they've yanked onto him, binoculars and frog flippers included. He is the neutral, generic human form, the gray center who must always assume disguises — in order to be seen and, therefore, to feel himself.

En el amor, veo una artimaña de mi instinto para no asesinar al otro[...]

In some ways, it's easier to be the lead. Week after week, scene after scene, the rhythms of filming force you to peel away a certain amount of artifice. When you're on set that much, there's a license to let the character emerge from the work itself.

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

But realism in art can only be achieved in one way—through artifice.

I don't understand 'The Only Way Is Essex' and 'Made in Chelsea': the way they pretend there's no camera. I cannot fathom the attraction.

spoke through her teeth, another skill

I love glamour and artificial beauty. I love the idea of artifice and dressing up and makeup and hair.

The woman who presents herself to the spectator as a "picture" forever arranged is, for the contemplative mind, the chiefest danger.

Photoshop makes things look beautiful just as you have special effects in movies. It's just a part of life.

This clockwork twin of mine halted before me, her bowels churning out a settecento minuet, and offered me the bold carnation of her smile. Click, click--she raises her arm and busily dusts my cheeks with pink, powdered chalk that makes me cough; then thrusts towards me her little mirror.

For me, the whole fame and industry facade is a load of rubbish.

Drag is something real. We're so fake that something real actually comes through.

I'm anti-verite. I think the verite style is a completely false thing. Most things are false to arrive at a truth; verite is falsity without acknowledging its falsity.

Personality is everything that's false in a human: everything that's been added on to him and contrived.

Femininity in general is seen as frivolous. People often say feminine people are doing 'the most,' meaning that to don a dress, heels, lipstick and big hair is artifice, fake, and a distraction. But I knew even as a teenager that my femininity was more than just adornments: they were extensions of me, enabling me to express myself and my identity.