Quotes About Art

Para aprender el arte del olvido. Un símbolo, una rosa, te desgarra.

Omettere sempre una parola, ricorrere a metafore inette e a perifrasi evidenti, é forse il modo piú enfatico di indicarla.

T]he aesthetic act cannot be carried out without some element of astonishment, and that to be astonished by rote is difficult.

Nouns are abbreviations. Instead of saying cold, sharp, burning, unbreakable, shining, pointy, we utter dagger; - Verbiage for Poems

Mir Bahadur Alí, lo hemos visto, es incapaz de soslayar la más burda de las tentaciones del arte: la de ser un genio.

La segunda, que un famoso poeta es menos inventor que descubridor.

El concepto de arte comprometido es una ingenuidad porque nadie sabe del todo lo que ejecuta. (The notion of art as a compromise is a simplification, for no one knows entirely what they are doing.)

Quando leggiamo versi davvero straordinari, davvero buoni, tendiamo a farlo ad alta voce. Un buon verso non si lascia leggere a bassa voce o in silenzio. Se ci riusciamo, non è un verso efficace: il verso esige di essere declamato. Il verso non dimentica di essere stato un'arte orale prima di essere un'arte scritta, non dimentica di essere stato un canto.

Siamo fatti per l'arte, siamo fatti per la memoria, per la poesia o forse per l'oblio. Ma qualcosa resta e questo qualcosa è la storia o la poesia, che non sono essenzialmente diverse.

Cumplidos los cien años, el individuo puede prescindir del amor y de la amistad. Los males y la muerte involuntaria no lo amenazan. Ejerce alguna de las artes, la filosofía, las matemáticas o juega a un ajedrez solitario. Cuando quiere se mata. Dueño el hombre de su vida, lo es también de su muerte.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream

One line plus one line results in many meanings.

It's the only dish I serve my craziness for color in.

I was for years in the yellow period, you know.

for where the religions spirit is not tolerated, where there is no room for poetry and art, where love and death are robbed of all significant effect and reduced to the level of a banality, philosophy will never prosper.

Aurore sketched—it would always be her pleasure—and scribbled—it was her passion...

In May 1830, when in Paris alone with little Maurice, she found herself going to museums—the Louvre, the Luxembourg. It was not the first time, but she returned again and again, as if drunk and nailed to the Titians, the Tintorettos, the Rubens. She suddenly responded to painting as she had long before to music. Whatever métier, whatever trade or profession she would choose, she knew she would be an artist—in letters, in life, in her very being.

Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.

In an anthropological respect, let me reiterate, a human being is an aesthetic creature before he is an ethical one. Therefore, it is not that art, particularly literature, is a by-product of our species' development, but just the reverse. If what distinguishes us from other members of the animal kingdom is speech, then literature – and poetry in particular, being the highest form of locution – is, to put it bluntly, the goal of our species.

Susan, Susan -- Poetry: aviation! Prose: infantry. [to Susan Sontag]

Scratch on, my pen: let's mark the white the way it marks us.

Suicide] is the essence of self-portraiture.

Had art indeed depended on experience as much as the critical profession wants us to believe, we'd have far more – and far better – art on our hands than we do. A poet is always the product of his – that is, his nation's – language, to which living experiences are what logs are to fire

By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan.