Quotes About Art

Music is the sonic representation of our soul.

I can see no other reason for the existence of art and poetry and religion except as they tend to restore in us a freshness of vision and more emotional glamour and more vital sense of life.

Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.

If there is a hero, it is choreography.

Poetry as an art form invites us to go beyond our preconceptions, to invent, to be truly imaginative. One reason for this is because that action, of going beyond ourselves, is an effect of the form itself: the poem is a structure which helps us to think differently, and one of the ways it does this is through its focus on imagery, encouraging us to think through our images in rational or irrational patterns.

He purchased that great canvas also bearing the likeness to his beloved, for he could not bear another to look upon what he dreamed each night...but as he now had enjoyed the quite singular pleasure of his wife's true form revealed to him, he knew he would have [it] returned... At one time he had thought it quite impossible, but now he understood how truly inadequate the vision cast by his mind's eye had been.

Write from the heart. A book without a pulse is like a person without a spirit." Linda Radke, President of Five Star Publications

Me, I always thought the international art world was for the elegant and elite. Classy, calm, sedate, cultured, I'm tellin' you, there are more lowlifes in this business than all the Hannibal Lecter wanna-bes in the world.

Partial truth - the seeds of wisdom- can be found in many places. In primal instinct may partial truth be found ... in earthly law, social custom, scientific research, philosophy and religious doctrine. The seeds of wisdom are contained in all scriptures ever written ... especially in art, music and poetry ... and, above all, in Nature.

Sometimes I lay my body down on a marble slab . . . and become poetry.

I knew my box of paints, stored away on the bedroom shelf of my small house across the ocean, could never create such colors.

Il y a des écrivains qui réunissent cent mille personnes à leur enterrement et il y a ceux qui n'ont jamais suscité la ferveur que d'une poignée de passeurs, confrérie clandestine dont les membres se transmettent le flambeau d'une génération à l'autre. (p. 143)

It's often about the simple things, isn't it? Painting and photography are first about seeing, they say. Writing is about observing. Technique is secondary. Sometimes the simple is the most difficult.

I have stopped painting. I stand in front of the easel, brush in hand, but my mind is blank. It is as if I have been struck by a strange kind of blindness.

Men recorded their experiences and called it history; men looked about the world and called their observations science; men wondered about the existence of God and the problem of evil and called their speculations theology; men did handiwork and called it art; men made up stories, wrote them down and called them literature; men thought about such topics as truth, beauty, justice, and the nature of existence and called their opinions philosophy.

What was hard was discovering the true life of the poem inside its technical scaffolding.

When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now. But I don't think there are too many films coming out these days that we're going to look at in the future and say, 'This is one of the great ones.'

Edith would always believe art was for everyone, whether rich or poor, educated or not.

he was reluctant to return to New York, a town less supportive of his sort of art.

When I work alone, it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits, and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive, subconscious process.

The order of Fungi is still Chaos, a scandal of art, no botanist knowing what is a Species and what is a Variety.

Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians--they're the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker.

A body of work may be reviled -- mostly by those who have no knowledge of its workings -- and yet still carry elements of what can only be considered eternal truths.

Life's like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning.