Quotes About Art

That was the bat signal for me - 'Rent' changed my life. It took me years before I got beyond that show.

I wrote my first play at the age of 10, 55 years ago, and I've always found it a fantastic relief to imagine I know what things would be like from the point of view of other individuals and to send out signals from where I actually am not. Playwrights never need to write from the place where they are.

Pablo Picasso was generous. But he always signed and dedicated his gifts even when he knew that people would sell them because they needed the money.

I counterfeited Mark Kostabi's artworks. During the eighties, Mark didn't paint his own paintings. Instead, he had other artists painting them, and he just added his signature. So what I did was to use some of the same painters, and signed his name myself.

I was 18, at art school, and saw this cute boy playing banjo. I was obsessed. I taught myself how to play. I listened to a lot of country and just messed around. The second song I wrote on the banjo was 'Good to Be a Man.' That what's got me signed.

My goal is to make fine art, and fine art comes from the soul. If you have virtuosity and facility, you can take and create something of significance.

Music is neither old nor modern: it is either good or bad music, and the date at which it was written has no significance whatever.

Fashion is not interesting unless it has some connection to something outside of that world. It's the same thing with any part of the arts: you can't just take pictures - you have to look at science, to listen to music; you have to be aware of the connections within the world. If you take something in an isolated box, it loses all significance.

Art is significant deformity.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

Music has always been an incredibly significant part of my life and a meaningful way in which I express myself.

I feel like I have at least begun to make a contribution, but my most significant concern has to do with whether my actual art will be preserved for future generations or be erased.

I'm not naive enough to pretend that on its own cinema can capture the very soul of significant social and cultural problems.

Poetry is not mainstream, but then neither is serious fiction, really. But I don't think there's a lot to worry about in this particular 'problem'. Why does art have to be mainstream to be significant?

I don't much like post-modernism, because post-modernist has become the basket in which every mediocre person can shuffle things and pretend to do something significant, and we could also mention who use post-modernism in this way - maybe we shouldn't.

I will work in films based on quality productions and significant characters.

I went to a performance-art high school, and a teacher there was signing me up for open-mic nights at the comedy club. I think about it now, and I think, 'Well, that may be inappropriate,' but it was great!'

I'm not a signing or dancing man.

Enjoying art is a personal matter. It's made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction.

To put it crudely, 'The Act of Killing' would blast open the space for the more delicate film, 'The Look of Silence,' to do its work.

One of the best things about paintings is their silence - which prompts reflection and random reverie.

For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence.

The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence.

I'm going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I've also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence.