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.

I call architecture frozen music.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

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.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

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

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

Obviously black matches with everything.

I paint; I draw and paint – I’ve been doing that since I was in third grade, drawing realistically and then changing to abstract art. That was my first creative thing before guitar or comedy.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

In 3-D filmmaking, I can take images and manipulate them infinitely, as opposed to taking still photographs and laying them one after the other. I move things in all directions. It’s such a liberating experience.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

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.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

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.

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.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

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

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

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.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

I’d been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it’s environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this ‚ambient music.‘ But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.

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

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

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.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

In art the best is good enough.

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

All art is but imitation of nature.

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

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

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that’s important.

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

I create stars.

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

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

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

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.

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

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

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.