Art Speaks

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture. -Jean Cocteau

Every artist dips his brush in his own souls, and paints his own nature into his pictures. -Henry Ward Beecher

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

If my husband would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women in his paintings, he would fall over in a dead faint. -Mrs. Picasso

Nature is a revelation of God; art a revelation of man. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes. -Thomas Wentworth Higginson

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda, it is a form of truth. -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Pay no attention to what critics say. No statue has ever been put up to a critic. -Jean Sibelius

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work. Don't ask me what I want to express with my pictures, ask yourself, what they mean to you! -Michael Quack

Criticism is a queer thing. If I print, "She was stark naked" and then proceed to describe her person in detail, what critic would not howl? Who would venture to leave the book on a parlor table? But the artist does this and all ages gather around and look and talk and point. -Mark Twain

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they are or people might think we're stupid. -Jules Feiffer

Normal is in the eye of the beholder. -Whoopi Goldberg

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. -Mark Twain

Imitation is the most serious form of flattery. Every great work of art is offensive to someone, for a work of art is a protest against things as they are and a proclamation of things as they ought to be. -Gerald W. Johnson

I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums. -Steven Wright

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture. Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. -Pablo Picasso

Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. -Ansel Adams

No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film. -Robert Adams

Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner. You can't depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus. -Mark Twain

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. -Ansel Adams

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. -Ansel Adams

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. -Oscar Wilde

Art is long, life short; judgement difficult, opportunity transient. -Goethe

It's only words... unless they're true. -David Mamet

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. -John Kenneth Galbraith

Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work. -John Kenneth Galbraith

When you risk becoming an artist, you risk taking your talent seriously. -Dee Ito

What is written without effort is in general, read without pleasure. -Samuel Johnson

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. -Peter De Vries

Murder is a crime. Writing about it isn't. Sex is not a crime, but writing about it is. Why? -Larry Flynt

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. -Henry Steele Commager

I am a deeply superficial person. -Andy Warhol

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. -Robert Benchley

Art is work, to sell it is art. The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. -Marcel Proust

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. -Stella Adler

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. -G. K. Chesterton

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. -John Ciardi

The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean that you're an artist. The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it. -Elizabeth Drew

I like to think that a good painting (or a good poem or a good book, or any good thing) can be measured by how much, after experiencing it for a while, you start to forget that it was made about someone other than you. -Andrew Hershey

In feature films the directory is God; in documentary films God is the director. -Alfred Hitchcock

I hate flowers. I only paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move. -Georgia O'Keefe

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

My books are water; those of great geniuses are wine... everybody drinks water. -Mark Twain

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you. -Joubert

In his lifetime van Gogh painted 486 paintings. Oddly enough, 8975 of them are to be found in the United States. -Werner Lansburgh

There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun. -Pablo Picasso

The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a palette. -Henry S. Haskins

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. -Danny Kaye

Great art is an instant arrested in eternity. -Huneker

The writer must be willing, above everything else, to take chances, to risk making a fool of himself - or even to risk revealing the fact he is a fool. -Jessamyn West

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. -Cyril Connolly

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it? -Ernst Haas

Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind. -Louise Nevelson