Francesco Clemente Quotes

#1. I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

#2. Until my early teens, I lived with my mother in New York, and I spent a lot of time in the company of her friends, mostly artists and designers, such as Andy Warhol, Ross Bleckner and Francesco Clemente, none of whom had kids, so I was like their shared child.

Jade Jagger

#3. Zaha Hadid's Maxxi Museum is proof that Rome and contemporary architecture are no longer a paradox. The building is characteristic Hadid - with curving lines and organic shapes - and the permanent collection already boasts works by Francesco Clemente, William Kentridge, and Gerhard Richter.

Amanda Hearst

#4. For me, the fiction writer's job is to take the small, stupid process of learning to use an iPhone - and suddenly you're the guy who's asking your daughter, "When I go on Facebook, can it see me?"

George Saunders

#5. I'm at the age where I don't need an acid trip to feel naked ... to feel that I don't exist. Now a self-portrait is almost a reminder to me that I do exist.

Francesco Clemente

#6. We are talking. It's a shame. What is said is murdered. Our words that will not grow any bigger or any lovelier will wilt inside our bones. Words wither feelings.

Violette Leduc

#7. There's poetry in the world. Poetry doesn't belong just to the poets. You know, you can look at the most premeditated, cold blooded movie and find poetry in it.

Francesco Clemente

#8. A photograph to me is always a reminder of how the person was on a certain day in that certain light fixed. When I look at a watercolor of that same person, it seems to me alive, more open than a photograph.

Francesco Clemente

#9. And dilettantism is a humorous way to survive. Everybody understands you for it and everybody hates you for it. And not everybody chooses to be a dilettante. Many choose cunning and brute force.

Francesco Clemente

#10. If you want to compete in Italy, the only accepted ways are brute force, or cunning. Like Machiavelli says, "Fronte otra forze." And neither of these two "virtues" is suited to an artist. The artist has to stay intelligent.

Francesco Clemente

#11. No one expected the preacher's daughter to sin, but they sure would love to catch me at it,

Abbi Glines

#12. Fashion is the pursuit of perfection, Style is the acceptance of one's flaws.

Francesco Clemente

#13. We are not naturally intelligent, or happy. In fact, every day it is harder to remain intelligent. It seems often that people get intelligent through pain, but you can't be sure because nobody really can say, "I've been suffering."

Francesco Clemente

#14. My portraits are half what I see and the other half is invented or dictated by the person and the painting.

Francesco Clemente

#15. My husband has the philosophy that if you can work a Nintendo control, you can chop an onion. So, we have our children in the kitchen. We sit down every night for dinner. We're trying to give our kids a sense of what's going into their bodies, and it's also good for family time.

Debi Mazar

#16. When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it's this crazy chase of, Which face? Which one is the one?

Francesco Clemente

#17. When I look at a drawing of a person, I look at that person as living.

Francesco Clemente

#18. I repeatedly refuse to make any practical decisions. I get a feeling of nausea about practicality.

Francesco Clemente

#19. That moment when the person actually dictates the way I do the portrait is when the intimacy arrives.

Francesco Clemente

#20. The more you look down on others, the less ANYBODY will look up to you ...

Bob Teague

#21. Maybe poets express more directly a sense of sympathy for other human beings. Painting is a little bit more of a retreat from human beings in real life; painting is more about the extreme moments when speech doesn't help anymore.

Francesco Clemente

#22. In India and in New York the economy is naked. People are starving physically in India, and emotionally in New York.

Francesco Clemente

#23. If I leave this Earth, I want to leave this Earth just knowing I've tried to give something back and tried to do something worthwhile with myself.

Patrick Swayze

#24. Worship God. It's easier than thinking.

Chapman Cohen

#25. Murder is such an elastic term, isn't it?
("Mind Over Murder")

Cornell Woolrich

#26. I like building.

Ross Levinsohn

#27. No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight waiting for the hint of a spark

Death Cab For Cutie

#28. Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.

Terry Pratchett

#29. It is very scary to think mechanically about someone you know. That means that the second time you meet a person is useless. Which I tend to believe anyway.

Francesco Clemente

#30. I never paint a portrait from a photograph, because a photograph doesn't give enough information about what the person feels.

Francesco Clemente

#31. I first think of intelligence. You need it for surviving in Italy because Italy is so pompous.

Francesco Clemente

#32. There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so as to corner the market.

Jane Smiley

#33. Painting is like making love. You cannot ask, 'How do you do it?' But, hopefully, it is beautiful.

Francesco Clemente

#34. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

Fyodor Dostoevsky

#35. In my head I am in one of those Buddhist caves where you see a thousand Buddha faces on the wall. In my head I am on my seventeen-year-old acid trip, when I saw my personas fall one minute after another, as if I was dying every moment.

Francesco Clemente

#36. Me, I'm an encyclopedia. I'm not a very smart guy, but I'm an encyclopedia. You can ask me about anything you want. Probably I have the book; probably I have a first edition.

Jose Andres

#37. We hope that the elected officials will respond positively to a ground swell of letters, phone calls, e-mails and visits from parents. The law clearly states that the responsibility for giving a sound basic education to our children lies with New York State.

Major Owens

#38. To me the poets are closer than I am to the idea of voice, to a sort of primeval song that we all participate in.

Francesco Clemente