Quotes About Art

When it was time to write, and he took his pen in his hand, he never thought of consequences; he thought of style. I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there's nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.

All men owe honor to the poets - honor and awe; for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.

It is hateful to me to tell a story over again, when it has been well told.

For the more literal approach would seem to be too little English, and the more literary seems too little Greek. I have tried to find a cross between the two, a modern English Homer.

Translation is the art of listening. In one ear is the sound of the original text, and in the other is a rhythm, wordless, waiting to find its voice. Somehow, eventually, the right words rise into the rhythm and become it, as if the listening created what one wanted to hear.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

A maid, unmatch'd in manners as in face,Skill'd in each art, and crown'd with ev'ry grace:

For ages past the Genius of Literature and the Genius of Art have walked together hand in hand. For the Goddess of letters is blind, and only she of Art can lend her sight.

Khalil Bendib, with a few ingenious strokes of his pen, gets to the heart of the issues of our time. His cartoons are in the greatest tradition of American political humor, with that combination of wit and intelligence so needed in the struggle for justice.

some art commentators have described as the inner despair of a world laughing at its own misfortune.

Books have a way of dwelling like parasites, carried forth in the minds of readers, turning up by force of succession in later works of art. I was part of that living chain of ideas reaching into the future.

Lucy paints portraits of Barbara Streisand.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off." —J. Conrad

I do it for the music.

We should talk less and draw more. (Goethe)

Dying's an art, and at our age we ought to be learning it. It helps to have seen someone who really knew how. Helen knew how to die because she knew how to live—to live now and here and for the greater glory of God. And that necessarily entails dying to there and then and tomorrow and one's own miserable little self.

That's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.

The scene [Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm, and there, I can barely make it out, the two legs of a man who fell headlong into the sea. This is called the Fall of Icarus. Compared to everyday life, the fall of an idealist who flew too high with candle-wax wings is an unremarkable tragedy.

As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.

God forbid that I should ever suffer the shame of publishing a book for money, or of having one of my family so demean themselves. How can one tell who might read it? No worthy book has ever been written for gain, I think;

Life, like a good painting, needs balance, a harmonious arrangement to avoid being chaotic, a mess, a failure.

I painted not what I saw but how you wished to be seen.

I cannot remember a single painting, although I do remember trying hard to be deeply impressed by them at the time.

I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form.