Quotes About Art

haiku were not written to be weighed down with commentary. (Buson, p. 103)

too much explanation can take the pleasure out of any poetry. (Preface, vii)

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Action Painting has to do with self-creation or self-definition or self-transcendence; but this dissociates it from self-expression, which assumes the acceptance of the ego as it is, with its wound and its magic.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous. Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead.

cease to regard the canvas as a surface on which to paint a picture, but instead as a surface on which to record an event

For colour is one of the most rapturous truths that can be revealed to man.

Art is the expression of the invisible by means of the visible

Every face has expression of a far more interesting and enduring kind than these momentary disturbances of its form occasioned by laughter or some passing thought, &c. And it must never be forgotten that a portrait is a panel painted to remain for centuries without movement. So that a large amount of the quality of repose must enter into its composition.

We view Big Business as business but equate small business with art; we call it entrepreneurship.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

The urge for good design is the same as the urge to go on living.

Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters.

Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

I am auditioning again - getting back to theatre would be amazing.

Boeken die niet gebaseerd zijn op een schema zijn weekdieren.

Schrijven is stratenmaken: op je knieën liggen en achteruit kruipen.

Misschien is fictie het net waarin hij gevangen kan worden.

Ik wilde dat ik het vermogen had om uiting te geven aan mijn gevoelens. Jammer genoeg kan ik dat niet; maar ik troost mij met de gedachte, dat degene die het wel kan die gevoelens misschien niet bezit.

Houd je een vulpen in je hand, dan wordt de inkt warm. De inkt komt net zo warm als je bloed op het papier en dat moet je hebben.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.