Quotes on Art

My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to those who do not see them? . . . I can find the best and clearest words to explain my meaning, and I have spoken to the most intelligent people about art, and they have not understood; but among people who understand, words are not necessary, you say humph, he, ha and everything has been said.

Skateboarding is as much, or more, an art of mode of expression than it is a sport. What skateboarding has given me is precisely that: a form of expression that drew me to it, and, in so doing, I was able to express and be who I wanted to be through it, in a sense.

There's an art to asking questions. Briefings are valuable but normally communicate primarily what the subordinate leader wants you to know, and often the picture they provide is incomplete.

Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine!

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation.

Others may fashion more smoothly images of bronze (I for one believe it), evoke living faces from marble, plead causes better, trace with a wand the wanderings of the heavens and foretell the rising of stars. But you, Roman, remember to rule the peoples with power (these will be your arts); impose the habit of peace, spare the vanquished and war down the proud!

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

We go to the theater to be entertained, but if what is left after you watch the movie is a sort of eye-opening perspective on some social issues, then it can be a really powerful piece of art.

Poetry must be human. If it is not human, it is not poetry.

The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.

The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.

Man's striving for order, of which art is but one manifestation, derives from a similar universal tendency throughout the organic world; it is also paralleled by, and perhaps derived from, the striving towards the state of simplest structure in physical systems.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.

To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism - this is the art of living.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought.

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.