The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.

Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

Diplomacy is the art of saying ‚Nice doggie‘ until you can find a rock.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life – it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

‚The Lady’s World‘ should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

All art is quite useless.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

You have to believe in your process. You have to believe in the things that you are doing to help the team win. I think you have to take the good with the bad.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Life is a lively process of becoming.

Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

I’m here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn’t make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement – it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.

Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.

I have been very interested and intrigued and congratulatory toward President Bush and his paintings.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

Art is the proper task of life.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

I think there’s a lot of similarity between what people try to do with religion with what they want from art. In fact, I very specifically think that they are same thing. Not that religion and art are the same, but that they both tap into the same need we have for surrender.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.

I always want to create and do things, or draw.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

All art is but imitation of nature.

Music is something no one can control.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

The artist in me cries out for design.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.