Quotes About Art

There's no rational reason why opera should exist. It's expensive, time consuming. Yet in some shape or other it has always existed.

[The] arresting of time is photography's unique capacity, and the decision of when to click the shutter is the photographer's chief responsibility.

Living in my head isn't fun sometimes. A kajillion thoughts are there at any one time, and the only place I find peace is at the easel.

One time I covered a wall with 8.5×11 pages of drawings, which made things feel a little bit different in the room.

Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?

A photograph for me does not have a sense of spiritual seduction, it does not have an essence, that this is something that permeates and which is eternal through time.

Prepared and fast foods have given us the time and freedom to see cooking as an art form - a form of creative expression.

The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.

Photography was a blessing because it filled my time.

It's a tough trick to be able to create an intelligent movie that has socio-political commentary, and also has the emotional and moving stuff, at the same time.

Paintings exist in the present tense, yet somehow, because of how it's structured, it can move backwards through time as well.

I think that time moves slower in painting. And maybe that accounts for a lot of the anxiety around painting in the last 40 or 50 years.

The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

A sketch will not serve more than one state of mind & will not serve to drink at again & again — in a sketch there is nothing but the one state of mind — that which you were in at the time.

Well, any time you do anything good, it's man versus himself, right? That's the art, the challenge.

My point was that it's hard to make good films, but I'm not under any illusion that you do all the time.

What do you mean by meant? Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is it the only value passing time as comfortably as possible?

The first time I ever cried in a movie was in Dead Poet's Society.

People tell me all the time that my songs help them express things to loved ones that they may not be able to say themselves.

I was in 20 Shakespearean plays by the time I was 20.

The cinema is - in Jean Cocteau's famous words - 'a dream that can be dreamt by many people at the same time'.

I want to create things while I have time on Earth, and the art of costume and culture has always inspired me.

I listen to music all the time. I write while listening to music. And I tell myself that the music nourishes the art forms that I do master and domesticate, and have authority over.