Art With Quotes

#1. We create our own reality. The blessing (or problem) with this is that when one creates one's own reality, one must live it! Are you living a blessing or is it a curse?

Gary R. Ryan

#2. Art is not a mirror held up to society but a hammer with which to shape it.

Bertolt Brecht

#3. I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle ... In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.

Henry Moore

#4. This is the body's nurse; but since man's wit
Found the art of cookery, to delight his sense,
More bodies are consumed and kill'd with it
Than with the sword, famine, or pestilence.

John Davies Of Hereford

#5. I am deeply spiritual; I revel in those things that make for good - the things that we can do to shed a little light, to help place an oft-dissonant universe back in tune with itself ... Long live art, long live friendship, long live the joy of life!

Jessye Norman

#6. I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating ... anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.

Steven Soderbergh

#7. There is a great promise for our cultural growth, but this promise is achieved only when our artists recognize that all great art has nationality, an imprimatur achieved with the keenest remembrance of time and place.

F. Sionil Jose

#8. Dull late-afternoon light glittered on the hanging copper pots in the kitchen where the old painter sat with his wine, smoking cigarette, a letter angrily crumpled on the table in front of him.

Stephanie Cowell

#9. Art ... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

Agnes Repplier

#10. The highest and best work of imagination is the marvelous transformation that it works in character. Imagine that you are one with the principal of good, and you will become truly good.

Charles Fillmore

#11. When there were financial difficulties they still managed to provide us with music and art lessons.

Jerome Isaac Friedman

#12. Wall-to-wall masterpieces, after all, ought to be preferred to wall-to-wall decorative arts, even if the decorative arts are of the highest quality peppered and salted with dukes and tiaras.

Joseph Alsop

#13. If cunnilingus was a martial art, I'd wear my black belt with pride.

Jodi Knight

#14. Winckelmann wished to live with a work of art as a friend. The saying is true of pen and pencil. Fresh lustre shoots from Lycidas in a twentieth perusal. The portraits of Clarendon are mellowed by every year of reflection.

Robert Aris Willmott

#15. I'm quite obsessed with the idea of nailing the girl friendship. It's such an art, so delicate.

Alanis Morissette

#16. Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance

Garry Kasparov

#17. It's what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.

Seth Godin

#18. Every woman, even the most respectable, had roses blooming under glass; lips cut with a knife; curls of Indian ink; there was design, art, everywhere; a change of some sort had undoubtedly taken place.

Virginia Woolf

#19. I felt the sharp sting of emptiness and solitude that you feel so acutely and with such internal sorrow and wonder whenever music is performed well.

Pat Conroy

#20. Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#21. Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

Al Alvarez

#22. The art of injudicious reading, the art of miscellaneous reading which every normal man ought to cultivate, is a very fine and satisfactory art; for the best guide to books is a book itself. It clasps hands with a thousand other books.

Maurice Francis Egan

#23. 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.

Brandon Boyd

#24. Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.

Gian Carlo Menotti

#25. To begin with the wine jar in learning the potter's art.

Plato

#26. Every book begins and ends with other people- the readers who suggest the book to us and encourage us to read it, the talented author who crafted each word, the fascinating individuals we meet inside the pages- and the readers we discuss and share the book with when we finish.

Donalyn Miller

#27. When a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was ... this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art.

Orhan Pamuk

#28. Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.

Henry Fielding

#29. Is he seriously joking with me? The master of the dark art of raising the dead has become a standup comedian? Surely this is the end of the world.

David Estes

#30. Creative expression is not just a means of getting attention, although some have approached art that way. Think of art as a way of connecting, of sharing your insights with others.

Nita Leland

#31. If you do not start with the idea, you are creating fine art - its personal, but it tends not to communicate.

Seymour Chwast

#32. Always suffer delusions of grandeur with your art. What you are unable to face will never hurt you

Ginnetta Correli

#33. For the most part I felt nothing but scorn for an art form that required the pretense that it was natural for people to communicate with one another in rhymed song.

Joel Derfner

#34. Living with and studying good paintings offers greater interest, variety and satisfaction than any other pleasure known to man.

Albert C. Barnes

#35. I paint with shapes.

Alexander Calder

#36. If we examine a work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear - but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented.

Edgar Allan Poe

#37. Let echo, too, perform her part, Prolonging every note with art; And in a low expiring strain, Play all the comfort o'er again.

Joseph Addison

#38. With the manipulation of abstract
symbols, an artist can send you information without sound, change your feelings and,
sometimes, even beliefs. Artists convey the unspeakable. Artists inspire.

Jonathan Culver

#39. When I started Dylan's Candy Bar in 2001, I wanted it to be a place that merged my love of pop culture, fashion, art and music with candy. Since then, we have been fortunate to pioneer artistic partnerships with many legends.

Dylan Lauren

#40. I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again.

Michael Dirda

#41. Life is a canvas, so make your life as an ageless art. Everybody will be able to look at it and enjoy it. And, with time, it will get more valuable.

Debasish Mridha

#42. When my words are concealed
With lies and disguises, truth and beyond
Insecurities in the veil of trust
Betrayal in bounds of lies
It's just the charm of words darling
Giving the illusion of happiness inside misery

Irum Zahra

#43. The real problem with the art world is not the money men scavenging in its wake - they've always been there - but the pirates who've taken over the ship. I am thinking, of course, of that awful art world species: the curator.

Waldemar Januszczak

#44. Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.

Henning Mankell

#45. Art objects are inanimate sad bits of matter hanging in the dark when no one is looking. The artist only does half the work; the viewer has to come up with the rest, and it is by empowering the viewer that the miracle of art gains its force.

Vik Muniz

#46. Fairly early in my career, I had a passion for wine just as a consumer, and I started to learn about the whole process, starting with a piece of raw ground, and ending up with a work of art in a bottle.

Drew Bledsoe

#47. True art
comes
from flying
with the madness
so close
you burn
your eyelashes.

Atticus Poetry

#48. With the plundered people transferring their energies into relaxed and receptive thoughts, degradation and lust for power produced art.

Peter Weiss

#49. He'd once told me that the art of getting ahead in New York was based on learning how to express dissatisfaction in an interesting way. The air was full of rage and complaint. People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it.

Don DeLillo

#50. Politics with me isn't theater. It's performance art. Sometimes, for its own sake.

Roger Stone

#51. Everybody has his own great ideas about what my art should be. But I can do whatever I like and there aren't many constraints to the way I work, whether I'm using a brush with ink or paint.

Raymond Pettibon

#52. The heart of [J.G.] Ballard's vision [is] the object at odds with its function and abandoned by its time.

Tacita Dean

#53. A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#54. Dick Clark was a really great influence in my career; he helped me a lot with his whole organization, and they were awesome to me at all different points - but one thing that I really disagreed with him on was when he said that what I do, pop music, is a disposable art form.

Cyndi Lauper

#55. It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly, as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes 'art' in time.

Alfred Stieglitz

#56. Some believe that art is the imitation of nature; in fact, nature is so sublime that it cannot be imitated. However noble it may be, art cannot perform a single one of the miracles of nature. And besides, why imitate nature when it can be perceived by all those endowed with senses?

Kahlil Gibran

#57. Dance is about movement and can be an art, but it's also about communication - with yourself, as much as with other people.

Jan Murray

#58. I've worked with more than 50 directors and I've paid attention since day one. That's pretty much been my education, apart from studying art history and shooting with my own cameras. I've seen 50 different sets of mistakes and 50 different ways of achieving.

Tommy Lee Jones

#59. The love of art in its many forms lives on and enables us to enjoy the past, the present, and look with confidence to the future.

John Kurtz

#60. Hip hop is still strong. As an art form, music helps people express themselves, find meaning in their own lives and connect with their tribes.

Erik Parker

#61. Programming is a Dark Art, and it always will be. The programmer is fighting against the two most destructive forces in the universe: entropy and human stupidity. These are not things you can overcome with a "methodology" or on a schedule.

Damian Conway

#62. I was joking earlier when I said that all writers are manic depressives, but it's a joke with a lot of truth behind it. For fiction writers and poets, too, there's something wrong with you and you do this art as a way of correcting it or addressing it in some way.

T.C. Boyle

#63. The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.

Edward O. Wilson

#64. Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent. Any parent with a hard hand can crush it, but to nurture it is much more difficult.

Stephen King

#65. She knocked a third time, three regular strokes, gentle, but perfectly distinct, and with meaning in them; for, modulate it with what cautious art we will, the hand cannot help playing some tune of what we feel , upon the senseless wood.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#66. Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

Jean Cocteau

#67. It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself
which is what they are most needed for.

Rudolf Arnheim

#68. This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science. It's, on its best day, is a crude art. We make mistakes; I make mistakes. With more than 50 years as a journalist, I have at least had the opportunity to blow more stories, make more mistakes than maybe anybody in television.

Dan Rather

#69. When I travel, I draw and paint sketches which is great fun. And as long as you are fully aware that it has nothing to do with actual art, I think that's all right.

Arne Jacobsen

#70. Building a professional relationship on respect as opposed to affection is a very good idea. Running your art projects the way you'd run a dry-cleaning business is also a really good idea. You shouldn't go into work like you're going on a date, like you're hanging out with friends.

Penn Jillette

#71. The way to create art is to burn and destroy
ordinary concepts and to substitute them
with new truths that run down from the top of the head
and out of the heart

Charles Bukowski

#72. To persons uninstructed in natural history, their country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

Thomas Huxley

#73. I don't want to deal with big, grand themes in my stories; art has nothing to do with themes. When you deal with themes, you are not creating; you are lecturing.

Tatyana Tolstaya

#74. And when I protested a bit more, I remember he said, 'My dear Lady Ponsonby, there's nothing immoral about this. Art is only immoral when practiced by amateurs. It's the same with medicine. You wouldn't refuse to undress before your doctor, would you?

Roald Dahl

#75. If I, as a human being and artist represent anything in the world, it is my Jewish people, and therefore Israel is the only state on our planet which I want to represent with my art and all my public activities, no matter where I live.

Evgeny Kissin

#76. Rama is a fairly common name in India. It symbolizes an individual who is interested both in enlightenment and martial arts. I do not claim to have any past life connection with the historical Rama. It's just a name I liked.

Frederick Lenz

#77. In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Ernst Fischer

#78. It's really interesting with art-movies too, but art especially - to see how your attitude toward artists and works and your level of appreciation of them is always shifting and changing over the years.

Richard Hell

#79. But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.

Wole Soyinka

#80. Since the choice of what we curl up with is often crucial for our solace and sanity, we need to learn how to nurture the talent of selection. Book browsing is a meditative art ... Books are as essential as breathing.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

#81. With regard to precipitous heights, if you are beforehand with your adversary, you should occupy the raised and sunny spots, and there wait for him to come up.

Sun Tzu

#82. I believe there is little to gain by exchanging opinions with other artists concerning either the ideology of art or technical methods.

Yves Tanguy

#83. When I left art school and went in search of work, visiting publishers and showing them my drawings and illustrations, I was met with a polite and sometimes enthusiastic response but no commissions.

Chris Riddell

#84. Anyone having to do with medicine will have looked at Frank Netter's art work ... I decided I would make him my model ... getting my degree in medical illustration and then going on to medical school.

David Bolinsky

#85. You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally.

David Cronenberg

#86. But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

John Drinkwater

#87. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows it to realize its supreme purpose through him.

Carl Jung

#88. My studio is arranged so that I have a comfortable seating area for meeting with clients, an office area beyond that and a painting area, which includes room for art students to sit and watch as I work.

Doug Dawson

#89. In true budo there is no enemy or opponent. True budo is to become one with the universe, not train to become powerful or to throw down some opponent. Rather we train in hopes of being of some use, however small our role may be, in the task of bringing peace to mankind around the world.

Morihei Ueshiba

#90. A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.

Annie Leibovitz

#91. I just always stay honest with myself. All my stuff isn't boastful, but some of it is. But that's just the music, the art.

Big Sean

#92. In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

Terry Pratchett

#93. I paint the walls with his blood.

DMX

#94. I like the idea that you can paint something outdoors, and anyone can see it. It's open to anyone, and people have to deal with it. In the gallery, it's the same 150 people on the San Francisco art scene. There's a dynamic on the street that's definitely more interesting.

Barry McGee

#95. I am not going to show you my art. I am going to share it with you. If I show it to you it becomes an exhibition, and in time it will be pushed so far into the back of your mind that it will be lost. But by sharing it with you, you will not only retain it forever, but I too will improve.

Ed Parker

#96. The result may be important but it's not the actual measure. The measure is the feeling you have made contact with something.

Eric Maisel

#97. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

Wassilly Kandinsky

#98. Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer; and if we don't fully understand something, it is an art to deal with it.

Donald Knuth

#99. One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Balthus

#100. Model building is the art of selecting those aspects of a process that are relevant to the question being asked. As with any art, this selection is guided by taste, elegance, and metaphor; it is a matter of induction, rather than deduction. High science depends on this art.

John Henry Holland