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

There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

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

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

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

Music is something no one can control.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

If he have faith, the believer cannot be restrained. He betrays himself. He breaks out. He confesses and teaches this gospel to the people at the risk of life itself.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

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

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, ‚Truth is the daughter of Time.‘

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.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time. We can’t even comprehend it. It’s such an illusion, it’s such a strange thing.

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

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.

All good art is an indiscretion.

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

I call architecture frozen music.

I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

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.

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.‘

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

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.

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

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

Prayer is a confession of one’s own unworthiness and weakness.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

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

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

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

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

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.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

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.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

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

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.