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

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

I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

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.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

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

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

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.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

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

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.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

I have always hated bowling, and I don’t mind admitting it.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

To do a dull thing with style-now that’s what I call art.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.

Art is the proper task of life.

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.

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.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

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

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

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.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

Music is like film to me.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

‚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.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

The universe can take quite a while to deliver.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That’s the upside to things getting challenging.

Time can behave like another direction in space under extreme conditions.

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.

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

I call architecture frozen music.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

All art is but imitation of nature.

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

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.