Art Quotes - Page 691

"The way I feel about music -- any song, any style -- is that there is no right and wrong, only true and false. If the music and lyrics are conceived out of honesty and if the production of the song goes along with its original message, then what has been expressed is art, regardless of what anyone's opinion is of it. So things are a lots impler if you just tell the truth.

The feat of superbly imitating a muscle, as Michelangelo did, or a face, as Raphael did, created neither progress nor a hierarchy in art. Because these artists of the sixteenth century imitated human forms, they were not superior to the artists of the high periods of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indochinese, Roman, and Gothic art who interpreted and stylized form but did not imitate it.

A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

Street protests in Saudi Arabia might warm our hearts, but they could easily lead to $250 a barrel oil and a global recession.

I remember I went to an exhibition somewhere and one of the artists, an Iranian lady, said, "I wish we had somewhere that our paintings would stay forever." So this idea came to me. I said, "She's right, we should have a place to keep them, and not only Iranian art works, but also of foreign artists."

When I'm lying wrapped up in your arms, the whole world just fades away. The only thing I hear is the beating of your heart.

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

I told him he'd have a heart attack a year ago, but unfortunately he lived a year longer.

It was widespread that the politics of Tea Party people would be foreign to Ronald Reagan and they would be seen by him as frivolous and uninformed.

There is no trick to writing a believable love story, a heartbreaking scene or real-sounding dialogue. All you need is to tell the truth. It’s always heartbreaking.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

True imagination is not fanciful daydreaming; it is fire from heaven.

Art ... is a force which blows the roof off the cave where we crouch imprisoned.

My mental approach is totally different. My coach predicated everything on defense. He always talked about defense, defense, defense. I took it to heart that if you play defense, you can take the heart from an offensive player.

We have enough experiences in a day to make art for a decade.

Not only Freud but artists and writers were also interested in the unconscious. It was medicine that made the first steps toward modernity.

I don't use the big video screens that a lot of other artists use because personally, I think it's kind of a crutch. I think sometimes it's like watching television as opposed to really getting involved with what is happening onstage and the people in your section.

-….when things seem to have reached that stage, merely say “I won’t play any longer”, and take your departure; but if you stay, stop lamenting.

Stay back, human. You don't know what you're dealing with.

Man is a predatory animal, and this aspect of his nature is nowhere better suited by environment than in the world of politics.

Someone has said that life itself is a party: you join after it's started and you leave before it's finished.

he sucked the nectar from her heart like a famished butterfly.

I suggest that what artists do in all media can be summarized as deliberately performing the operations that occur instinctively during a ritualized behaviour: they simplify or formalize, repeat (sometimes with variation), exaggerate, and elaborate in both space and time for the purpose of attracting attention and provoking and manipulating emotional response.