Quotes About Art

We are against the glorification of "the People," as we are against snobbery. It is not necessary to be an outcast bohemian, to be unkempt or poor, any more than it is necessary to be rich or handsome, to be an artist. Art is nothing to do with the coat you wear. A top-hat can well hold the Sixtine. A cheap cap could hide the image of Kephren.

There is nothing contemptible about an intoxicated man (if it is nothing more than a bookful of words or a roomful of notes that he has got drunk on).

Anything that survives the artist's death is not life but belated drama.

Lowndes was a colleague, who was not very active, but had just enough money to be a cubist, that was to say quite a lot.

Death is the thing that differentiates art and life. Art is identical with the idea of permanence. It is a continuity and not an individual spasm. Life is the idea of the person.

Anyone who says you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art.

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

Agriculture for an honorable and high-minded man, is the best of all occupations and arts by which men procure the means of living.

Anything forced is not beautiful

The invention of the art [of hunting] is from the gods; for hunting and dogs were the care of Apollo and Diana, who rewarded and honoured Chiron with a knowledge of them on account of his regard for justice.

Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it seeks actualisation. Moreover, it does not obey the objective concepts of time and space that belong to the physical world. When the discussion of time and space is imported into linguistic art from scientific aims and research methods, that linguistic art is entirely reduced to trifling pseudo-philosophical issues.

Everybody is wearing a mask. It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.

Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.

A good work can be communicated across languages ... [provided one does not] fall into the trap of narrow-minded nationalistic or chauvinistic thinking.

La escritura es una especie de sala de exposición, y un almacén que puede ayudar a crear un espacio para dar cabida a nuevas ideas y sentimientos. Si no pones estas historias por escrito, tu corazón se colmará de ellas y se romperá.

You can't write with your head. I want you to write with your hand," he said. It was rare for him to make a pronouncement like this, so I found myself simply nodding in silence. Then I stretched my hand toward him, fingers extended. "That's right. That's where the story should come from," he said, but he looked away, as though he had seen into the most vulnerable part of my body.

People are always saying the humanities are dead so it's strange how many conferences there are.

Today, computers help us making the music. It's really a tool.

The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness

Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches a different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies.

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?