While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

I’ve taken so many kids out of Pittsburgh and onto the great white way in New York City right into a Broadway show.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

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

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

One of the reasons I connect to the Super Bowl is that I approach my shows like an athlete.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

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

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

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.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

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.

And I try to give the best bang for the buck. I love performing more than anything else.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

I play a nobody in Japan.

All good art is an indiscretion.

My success rate speaks for itself.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.

In art the best is good enough.

You can’t build a plot out of jokes. You need tragic relief. And you need to let people know that when a lot of frightened people are running around with edged weaponry, there are deaths. Stupid deaths, usually. I’m not writing ‚The A-Team‘ – if there’s a fight going on, people will get hurt. Not letting this happen would be a betrayal.

Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

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.

Every time I get in the McLaren I feel more comfortable, my confidence increases and I feel more at home with the team.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

I’ve got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I’ve done it.

I’m not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it’s the recording or the performance side.

It’s easy to become very self-critical when you’re an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

You can sometimes play some really good football and not score.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?

Stand-up is hard.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.

Whatever I am, it’s natural… I don’t have to pretend to be aggressive, don’t have to show the opposition that I am on the field. Being aggressive comes naturally to me, helps me perform.

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

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

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

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.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

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

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

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.