Quotes on Art

Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.

To truly hate is an art one learns with time.

Happy thou art not; for what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get; and what thou hast, forgettest.

Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

The art of reading is to skip judiciously.

To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head - and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that's not the most important thing. It's the work itself.

A child her wayward pencil drew On margins of her book; Garlands of flower, dancing elves, Bud, butterfly, and brook, Lessons undone, and plum forgot, Seeking with hand and heart The teacher whom she learned to love Before she knew t'was Art.

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.

Avant-garde is French for bullshit

It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.

We launch our souls from the cannons of art and discipline, and on any one night, hovering over the chimney tops of Europe, halfway to the stars, there are armies of brightly spinning spirits that have risen like fireworks, tethered to the souls of those men and women who, by reflection, mortification, and devotion, effortlessly outdazzle kings.

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.

This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then comes languor and decay.

Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.

Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain.