Quotes About Art

If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination - that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.

Readers are always surprised to learn that authors have little or no input regarding the cover art for their books.

To some extent, I'm mildly surprised by every new piece, by the precise path that my interest takes.

There are times I've been surprised by how emotional I can be on stage.

It really surprises me that people in this day and age still write such busy music and fill up every space with layer upon layer of sound... it's like musical landfill.

The act of writing surprises me all the time. A miraculous thing happens when you have an idea and you want to convert it into words... and then you start to create a work of art, and that's another miracle, and it remains mysterious to the writer, or to this writer anyway.

By 3000 B.C. the art of Egypt was so ripe and so far advanced that it is surprising to find any student of early culture proposing that the crude contemporary art of the early Babylonians is the product of a civilization earlier than that of the Nile.

'Planet Caravan' by Black Sabbath is such a delicate song from such a surprising place.

I want to make beautiful paintings. But I don't make beautiful paintings by putting beautiful paint on a canvas with a beautiful motif. It just doesn't work. I expect my paintings to be strong and surprising.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

I can't remember how many years it's been since I last saw a David Parsons program or what I saw whenever it was, but that isn't surprising, since I can't really remember the first half of a David Parsons program while I'm watching the second half.

'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' was surprisingly easy and fun to write because I was feeling such strong emotions.

It's a surprisingly sacrificial job being an actor.

A lot of actors are relatively shy people, surprisingly, so acting is a way of not being shy - and being paid not to be shy.

My ideas are not meant to suggest dreams or reality, but a surreal quality.

I'm not a drama person, but when you can make a movie in song form in three-and-a-half minutes, it's surreal.

Musicals don't get enough credit for being so surreal. It's like an alternate universe.

A lot of TV can be linear and cinematic and formulaic. What's to say that people can't be creative and surreal - and push boundaries? You can look at a piece of art and not necessarily know what it means or what the artist intended by it. It's the effect it has on you.

Surrealism was necessary - essential, even - in the 1920s to bridge the gap between rationalism and the subconscious. It started something important. But by the early '60s, it had become petit-bourgeois; it was too intellectual and romantic, and had ground to a halt. It had become respectable.

Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail.

I love surrealism.

But surrealism is present in most of my pictures.

As far as the style, I was fascinated by surrealism.