Art Quotations | Page 4

Any art communicates what you're in the mood to receive.

Magic touches people in the way great art does. It lets them see the world with new eyes.

I'm Chief Executive Officer at Art of the Olympians Museum in Fort Myers, Florida, which was founded by my Mexico City teammate Al Oerter and his wife Cathy in 2005. It shows that Olympians can have another life; we have got art from more than 100 Olympians.

I met and became close with John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art. He was incredibly supportive about me working in color.

People go into a gallery, and they're afraid to express their opinions about art. No one's afraid to say, 'Keanu Reeves was bad in that movie.' We see so many films that we can tell who's faking it. But with art, we can't always tell.

Before I was a cosplayer, I was a fan artist. I would draw my favorite characters and sell the pieces at art auctions. But once I discovered cosplay, it was like, 'I don't have to draw my favorite characters, I can become my favorite characters.'

It is our art that has an opportunity to leave a footprint in the sand. They don't wrap fish in our work.

I think there's a deep impulse in most humans to do creative stuff, whether that's music or art, photography or writing. Most people at some point in their life say they want to do something creative - they want to be an actor, a director, a writer, a poet, a painter or whatever.

When I first started doing these roasts in the mid '90s, they were a lost art, like jousting or calligraphy. But I feel like roasts help tame the room and let off steam... It's like it's all being handled by professionals.

I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing and urban cultural thing to the downtown table.

Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence define. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious.

London, thou art the flower of cities all!

When I started writing about art, there were no curators.

Each single gesture of art must be daring. One must not be concerned with the side-effects.

Cinema is arguably the 20th century's most influential art form.

I don't like the word 'experiment' in the context of art in general. It implies something immature, unfinished, something entertaining for a moment before it becomes irrelevant.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Communication is very important. And the arts do that, whether it's film or theater.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

I've learned that I'm most powerful when I'm doing my art.

Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.

A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

I will never forget the pleasure and instruction I derived from working with a true master of his art, such as Edward G. Robinson was - and is. Surely his record for versatility, studied characterization - ranging from modern colloquial to the classics - and artistic integrity is unsurpassed.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

I know if I wasn't making music and acting, I would be involved in the performing arts world in some way. I would be either writing and making music for other artists or producing movies.

The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing.

The question of truth is forever in the air, and people look for it with particular fervor in art.

Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions.

We're a depraved civilization. All this technology, all the computer games and the iPhones... nobody will sit for art anymore. What a dismaying state of humanity.

A meaningful life - this is what we look for in art, in its smallest dewdrops as in its unleashing of the tempest. We are at peace when we have found it and uneasy when we have not.

When we hear some beautiful piece of Mozart or admire a wonderful building, we suddenly become present in ourselves. That's unusual nowadays because dishevelment and distraction have become an art form.

This art of acting is a process I love very much. It's an unbelievably fulfilling experience for me and I look forward to building upon my art in the years to come.

I would be willing to do almost anything to make Art happy. I care about our friendship. The only thing I won't do is change the essence of my work.

Art led the way for me to recover. He got out of prison before me and started traveling all over the world before I did. He showed me by example that it could be done, and I'll always love him for that.

Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.

There are so many people who want to be the next person on 'Home and Away,' or they just want to be on the cover of a magazine, and they don't really understand the craft. They're not interested in theatre, they're not interested in the art.

As a composer and as a musician I'm a true believer - and this is not to be overly diplomatic - I'm a believer that there's artistry in everything from a lawn gnome to a desk chair to a symphony to an Andy Warhol painting. There's art in absolutely everything.

One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find.

We need art more than ever as we stagger toward the Millennium.

I still find new things every night, which is the beauty and fun of live theater. It's a living, breathing art form.

In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making.

Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life.

Well, we have certainly produced great art before we did this. In my view, there are any number of areas of government which tax money should not be spent.

My exposure to visual art all my life was intensive.

But in Christianity, by contrast, the freedom of the children of God was also freedom from all important worldly interests, from all art and science, etc.

I love contemporary art, although I wouldn't want a pickled shark in my house.

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.

Color is everywhere, so everything has changed. I still can't see color, but I can perceive it. I can experience it in a way that allows me to be a part of this reality, which I was excluded from before. Thanks to the eyeborg, I've made a career by combining music and art.

Game design is a funny thing. There are people out there who are really good at it, but it's not clear that they can teach it. It's a very intuitive process. It's an art.

People understand what art is supposed to look like, and so it's easy to make something that looks like art but isn't - especially in an abstract form.

The world is a complicated place, and there's a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does.

My daughter loves to do art stuff. As a father, I like to play with her. We break out the big pads of paper and the glitter and all the stuff. She likes to do what she likes to do. I want to do something, too. So I've just started using her same materials - a lot of crayons, a lot of sparkle, charcoal, pencils, markers and glue.

There are art forms we don't know about yet that will be enabled by technology we haven't invented yet.

I love games. I honestly can't imagine working with any other medium. I guess it would be akin to an artist who's doing commercial art and then goes into education, but it really frees you up to do all other kinds of creative stuff.

The temple of art is built in words.

As soon as street art got popular, I was just like, 'I'm out of here.'

Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbour.

Let's face it: professing a deep interest in movies, the absolutely dominant global art form of the last century, is at this point like professing an interest in air. Passion is nice. Erudition is admirable. But it's like that moment when good manners cross over into meaningless etiquette.

In our generation, everybody told us that it's really important and it's nice to be able to speak a lot of languages. It's an art, too. It really impresses me, people who speak, like, seven languages. I admire them so much, so I began with English, and then Spanish and maybe Portuguese.

I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs.

Every Halloween for six years, I was a Ninja Turtle, and Mikey was my favorite. The turtles really made me who I am today. They got me into martial arts, meditation, surfing, skateboarding; big time influence on who I am today.

I'm a people person, very approachable. I go out every night, tons of functions. I love all facets of this industry... Music, film, TV, books, art. I love being around creative people.

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

At culinary school, none of the things we use to define ourselves outside that world - actor, producer, student - none of that matters. It's a magical art form.

The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion - others pray in church. It's a banality, but you don't possess art, it possesses you. It's like falling in love.

Art is nothing but the expression of our dream; the more we surrender to it the closer we get to the inner truth of things, our dream-life, the true life that scorns questions and does not see them.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Writing for children is an art in itself, and a most interesting one.

The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.

The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.

I have tried to preserve in my relationship to the film the same closeness and intimacy that exists between a painter and his canvas.

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny, and hope that whatever your art is that you're putting out there, if it's received, great, I respect you for receiving it. If it's not received, great, I respect you for not.

I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling... The desire to grasp and be united with another human is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgement of what is known as 'pure form' is inevitably influenced by it, and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot be hidden.

I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.

I acquired an admiration for Japanese culture, art, and architecture, and learned of the existence of the game of GO, which I still play.

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then, he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.

No, my degree was history, not the practice of art! I can't draw to save my life you know.

We have eyes, and we're looking at stuff all the time, all day long. And I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.

There was very little art in my childhood. I was raised in South Carolina; I wasn't aware of any art in South Carolina. There was a minor museum in Charleston, which had nothing of interest in it. It showed local artists, paintings of birds.

The early expression of my youth was filled with all the aspects of art.

Thus the castle of each feudal chieftain became a school of chivalry, into which any noble youth, whose parents were from poverty unable to educate him to the art of war, was readily received.

Always think that in any area of the arts, you get maybe ten percent of people who are creative, original... and the rest are generally following on, copying.

For one thing, I don't think art needs to be about suffering; sometimes it really seems like it's only the art about pain that is interpreted as profound, and in my work for years I've really tried to deal with subjects that are substantial, not just fluffy, but presented in a more playful, approachable kind of way.

My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of 'the arts' began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we're the parents of Iggy Pop.

No art that is not in the end understood by the People can live or ever did live a single generation.

The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral.

I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.

Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny.

Attack is only one half of the art of boxing.

The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history.

If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.

Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.

People think that the arts are optional and they aren't. They teach a level of emotional depth that's equally important to mathematic skill. You can replace some math skills with a calculator if you know how to operate the thing, but there's no calculator for human interaction.