A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

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.

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

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.

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

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

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.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

Music is like film to me.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

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.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

Fashion is made to become unfashionable.

The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

I didn’t know the term ‚synesthesia‘ until I was working on ‚Cruel Summer.‘ Halfway into writing that, I really understood that, my entire life, I had been trying to describe this condition of mine: through painting, through this seven-screen Surround Vision film we shot in Qatar, through all these things.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

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

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

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

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don’t intend to give in either till all is completed.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin – find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

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.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

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.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.