Quotes About Art

Good art-writers break conventions, hold a few sacrosanct, innovate their own. They measure their limits by instinct, not by rote. Mostly they learn by seeing miles of art, and reading good literature in bulk. There is no substitute, for a writer, for possessing a natural ear for language; a rich vocabulary; a flair for varied sentence structures; an original opinion; some arresting ideas to share. I can teach you none of that.

It is probably always disastrous not to be a poet.

The theory of thought is like painting: it needs that revolution which took art from representation to abstraction. This is the aim of a theory of thought without image.

Mucho más importante que el pensamiento es <>; mucho más importante que el filósofo, el poeta.

La littérature est une santé.

Perhaps the highest object of art is to bring into play simultaneously all these repetitions, with their differences in kind and rhythm, their respective displacements and disguises, their divergences and decentrings; to embed them in one another and to envelop one or the other in illusions the 'effect' of which varies in each case.

the canvas is never empty

Daca schizofrenia este universala, atunci marele artist este cu adevarat cel care sparge zidul schizofrenic, ajungand in patria necunoscuta, acolo unde el nu mai apartine niciunei epoci, niciunui mediu, niciunei scoli.

To show don't tell and all that other writery crap. (Adopted-orphan

As a writer, I roll around in words the way cats roll around in catnip.

Some argue the days of furthering or bettering oneself through a liberl arts education are gone, but that's true only if furthering and bettering means making more money...For many life reveals itself more intimately in literature than in ledgers.

Because his [Damien Hirst] art is idea art - art drawn on the back of cigarette packets and beer mats, roughed out in airport departure lounges and the back of the taxis, usually delegated to and carried by others - this leaves Damien a lot of time for what might loosely be called socializing. Hanging around.

Ian sighed wanly. I once had the means to be gaga over art–before I found myself in a country where the standard of beauty is toaster waffles shaped like cartoon characters.

Jonah peered critically up at the Renaissance masterpiece. Man, those copies don't due it justice. This one's the truth! Only a Janus, groaned Hamilton.

Art theft gave a guy an appetite.

The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no .

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?

Ronald Reagan is a triumph of the embalmer's art.

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

Marietta, I do not believe in ghosts, astrology, palmistry, graphology, John Cage, love or God. I do believe in the moment, in the pleasures of the flesh, of conversation, of art-at least for the few so minded. I believe . . .

Poets were intended to live to the full the life of the senses.

I complain about the United States not being Athens. I certainly say we are a very good Roman republic, and the lies are based upon the most advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created—the television commercial—and we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back.

blue rice bowl with the white rabbit painted on it.