The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn’t refer to anything else. They stood alone, and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else.

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.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

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.

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.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

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.

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.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

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

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

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

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

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.

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

Painting, I think it’s like jazz.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

In art the best is good enough.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

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.

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.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

When you come to see a picture of mine, I want you to know that I’m not going to do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I want you to know that you won’t be disappointed in me.

All good art is an indiscretion.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

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

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

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

All art is quite useless.

Life is short, the art long.

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.

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

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching.