It becomes one who is called to be a soldier, and to go a warfare, to endeavor to excel in the art of war. It becomes one who is called to be a mariner, and...

L’œuvre est une expression de ce qu’est l’homme, de ce qu’il sent, de ce en quoi il croit. Si elle se perpétue et si elle se développe, ce n’est pas tant à cause de l’homme...

Art is their weapon against forgetting.

I worried I would miss it, and I knew, from losing Wyatt, that things happen the moment the soul is released. Wyatt had been there in the school, watching me, making sure I survived. Souls...

I cannot explain, nor must an artist defend his work or elucidate in such a way the reeling audience can fathom, brutes that they are.

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to “overcome” doubt.

Toutes les erreurs de la critique commises à mon égard, à mes débuts, furent qu’elle ne vit pas qu’il ne fallait rien définir, rien comprendre, rien limiter, rien préciser, parce que tout ce qui est...

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass. The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. This requires a moment of pause–a contract with yourself through the object you look...

Gormenghast. Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet beats away from...

I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

Creating anything that never existed before is not sanity.

We crafted everything that hurt us into art.

Art for Art’s Sake is for the well fed. The well fed are all the babies in cradles and my kitty along with them, and I am happy if my writings are for my kitty.

Rumfoord had known that Constant would try to debase the picture by using it in commerce. Constant’s father had done a similar thing when he found he could not buy Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” at any...

Laugh, if thou art wise

At the end of his life, which had included financial ruin in the Great Depression, his wife’s barbiturate addiction and death by overdose, and then his own lung cancer, Doc said, “It was enough to...

I tried to push my body through his and completely disappear.

Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.

Everything you can imagine is real.

God creates the beauty. My camera and I are a witness.

He lifted his shirt, and on his back was the White Rabbit, wearing his waistcoat and looking at his watch. It was just like the illustration from the book. Only standing next to him, back-to-back,...

Artists have a habit of becoming what they practice on the canvas. Who knows when it began? When he discovered that the sky, filtered through a ghostly veil, would prove so profoundly right? I admit...

In art the best is good enough.

Not to admire is all the art I know.

Bricks without straw are more easily made than imagination without memories.

Men of learning in Milan have not enjoyed proper respect. They hid themselves in their laboratories and thought themselves lucky if . . . priests left them alone. All is changed today. Thought in Italy...

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Art, like Nature, has her monsters

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down....

The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge...

Don’t we all know that art is dangerous. You play it – then you live it.

Literature is the aesthetic exploitation of language

A Gift for YouI send you…The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope...

It’s rather the possibility of friendship, unencumbered by feelings of attraction or shyness; the possibility of working on the same wavelength, as it were, with someone who understands you because he’s a boy as you...

Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods.

So there were two worlds: the perceived world, a dimension of adjectives, equations and brush strokes, a surface dazzling with our efforts to render it, but ultimately bearing only our own reflections; and the impenetrable...

While friends are there to motivate us and keep us pleased. Our enemies are there to annoy us, which makes us work harder to beat them.

It only becomes art if it touches other people.

Seni sama pentingnya dengan matematika. Seni memanusiakan manusia. Seni menciptakan rasa empati

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask...

Like the sundial, my paint box counts no hours but sunny ones.

Sometimes an artist’s first invention is herself.

As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I’ve no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you’re a bore.

If you can’t focus then how do you expect to make your dreams come true?

The secret of good magic is another magic.

It may be that The Great Gatsby is as perfect, word for word, just in terms of English; but Ulysses is deeper, richer, wider – and is comic, whereas The Great Gatsby is a tragic...

Friendship is an obstetric art; it draws out our richest and deepest resources; it unfolds the wings of our dreams and hidden indeterminate thoughts; it serves as a check on our judgements, tries out our...

Begging is much more difficult than it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it’s a high art form that takes years of dedicated practice to master.

If you clean it up, get analytical, all the subtle joy and emotion you felt in the first place goes flying out the window.