Art Quotes

What motivates me in art is the ugly and beautiful nature of the truth. It has to be truthful and honest, even if it is ugly and grotesque.

I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Art imitates life. Life imitates high school.

A blind man can make art if what is in his mind can be passed to another mind in some tangible form.

Really, I think that going out and playing with your friends is kind of becoming a lost art, with the kids in the neighborhood.

There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within.

Raising children is a creative endeavor, an art rather than a science.

The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism.

One doesn't make art for other people, even though I am very concerned with the viewer.

In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them.

Of course, I did lots of what would be called graphic design now, what used to be called commercial art.

Land really is the best art.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.

I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.

All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal partnership.

Female artists are the perfect example of a creator: They know how to make life and art with their bodies. Life comes from their bodies, so on a very basic level, they have more to write about.

I think art can reflect tragedy.

For me, art is always a kind of theater.

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.

When we finally came to start work on this, the joy was it was only Joel and I, we didn't have to answer to anybody, and we didn't have to submit a screen play or anything like that. We just wrote it and then made it.

It would have to be connected with performance art somehow, either in the front of the house or the back. I was myopic about this from fourth grade on.

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.