Quotes About Interpretation

The search for the right answer is the enemy of art.

Art opens the fishiest eye . . .

Poetry is a totally different art than film.

But it's hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater.

The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.

What happens when an art form becomes ambiguous, I think, is that the standards are lowered. You can say anything is jazz. So I think it's important to reflect on what made jazz so special.

Art isn't and shouldn't be responsible. If it is, it isn't functioning as art.

I think about art a lot only in two contexts. One is narrative... The other thing that I'm interested in, which is tangential, but not unrelated... All art to me is about problem solving.

A great artist ... takes what he did not make and makes of it something that only he can make.

In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

Self-exposure is commendable in art only when it is of a quality and complexity that allows other people to learn about themselves from it.

Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?

Every artist paints his Madonna according to his own pre-conceived ideas.

I think if art has one underlying value, it's that.

There are films that can only be made in a specific country but that have a wider meaning. I think that's true of any art form.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Artistic productivity is the capacity for being voluntarily involuntary.

Art inspires me. Looking at art in a museum, listening to music, reading the works of other writers.

Theatre critics have no special access to the truth. And there should be no objective truth to art.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it....for me, every act of the art of solving a mystery.

Anything that reflects the human condition back on humans in the entertainment medium is art.

Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader.

In the domain of art there is no light without heat.

You cant just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.

To read a novel is a difficult and complex art.