One thing is certain: the arts keep you alive. They stimulate, encourage, challenge, and, most of all, guarantee a future free from boredom. They allow growth and even demand it in that time of life we call maturity but too often enter it with a childish faith that what we learned in youth is sustenance enough for the years when most men are mentally famished but won't admit it—or when they are apt to curb their hunger with the sops of complacency, security, and the assurance of death.
Interpretation
The arts are essential for personal growth and preventing boredom throughout life.
Vincent Price emphasizes the vital role of the arts in maintaining vitality and encouraging growth as individuals mature. He suggests that engaging with the arts keeps minds stimulated and challenges complacency, rather than allowing people to settle into a monotonous existence, thus highlighting the importance of creativity and self-expression in a fulfilling life.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of arts education in schools.
There's something fascinating about seeing something you don't like at first but directly know you will love—in time. People are that way, all through life. You come against a personality, and it questions yours. You shy away but know there are gratifying secrets there, and the half-open door is often more exciting than the wide.
What's important about an actor is his acting, not his life.
I trust people who are violent about art, as long as they aren't closed-minded. But, unfortunately, most art blowhards are also art bigots.
We may all be a peculiar lot...often broke, often dissatisfied because we're not doing more and better work...but we know how to have a ball that makes the rest of the world seem square.
In art, religion, and politics the respect must be mutual, no matter how violent the disagreement.
Writing is the delicate, difficult, and dangerous means of succeeding in avowing the unavowable.
The photographer's problem is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium, for it is precisely here that honesty no less than intensity of vision is the pre-requisite of a living expression. The fullest realization of this is accomplished without tricks of process or manipulation, through the use of straight photographic methods.
So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?
Acting is different from stand-up. It gives you this ability to enter into another character, to create another person.
You have to create the show anew, and find it anew, on a nightly basis.
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