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Quotes about art

621 quotes from 285 people

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I like silent pictures and I always have. They are often so much more beautiful than sound pictures are. Perhaps they had to be.
Akira Kurosawa1910–1998On the style of the film Rashomon, as quoted in The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1998) by Donald Richie, 3rd edition, p. 79
- Beauty
- Movies
There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.
Akira Kurosawa1910–1998Something Like an Autobiography (1981)
‘Tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.
Walter Savage Landor1775–1864“Verse” (“Past ruin’d Ilion Helen lives”)
- Poetry
The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Introduction
- Writing
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain’t no free rides, baby.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018The Language of the Night (1979)
Sometimes one’s very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018“The magician” by Maya Jaggi in The Guardian (17 December 2005)
- Writing
To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist.
Timothy Leary1920–1996Changing My Mind, Among Others: Lifetime Writings (1982), p. 76
- Science
Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.
Bruce Lee1940–1973
My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.
John Lennon1940–1980Last interview (1980)
When real music comes to me⁠—the music of the speres, the music that surpasseth understanding⁠—that has nothing to do with me, cause I’m just the channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium…those moments are what I live for.
John Lennon1940–1980
- Music
If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.
John Lennon1940–19801972 Mike Douglas Show, quoted in: Lawrence, Ken (2005) John Lennon: In His Own Words, p. 107.
- Music
It would have been better if you had died and Gershwin had written the elegy.
Oscar Levant1906–1972On a friend’s elegy for Gershwin; recounted in The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)
- Clever Jabs
- Music
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963
- Writing
Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Reflections on the Psalms
- Poetry
Every poem can be considered in two ways⁠—as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963A Preface to Paradise Lost
- Poetry