Art Quotes

"As Mayor, I will fully support my Arts Commission and its professional selection committees so that they can commission a full range of public art that is daring and, when appropriate, daringly traditional"

Gavin Newsom, Politician

"I don't believe in art. I believe in artists"

Marcel Duchamp, Artist

"I have respect for those who make money at art and do it well and smartly, because that commercial aspect keeps the world going and running, in a sense"

Tina Weymouth, Musician

"I also had a tremendous passion for art and read a lot"

Nigel Dennis, Writer

"What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit"

Richard Attenborough, Actor

"Filmmaking is a huge privilege; it's not brain surgery. It's art, and art is supposed to be an enjoyable process, and it is an enjoyable experience for me"

Lake Bell, Actress

"I really think that's what music and art is about. It's another way to connect to the divine. It's a real pure way of touching that deeper reality beneath our life"

Kathy Mattea, Musician

"Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue"

Benjamin Haydon, Artist

"I went to art school when I was little. I took ballet lessons. I played a little kick ball. I was sort of into everything because I had too much energy and I didn't know where to put it. When I was a preteen, I got into singing, and became really obsessed with it"

Amanda Seyfried, Actress

"The fact that biological, or "natural" rules might help in the creation of a computer generated work of art is interesting, but even a wonderful work of art made in this fashion isn't the same as a person, with all his or her experiences and emotions involved, making art"

Steven Levy, Journalist

"The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner"

Mary McCarthy, Author

"We were suddenly faced with the necessity of training a lot of young men in the art of navigation"

Clyde Tombaugh, Scientist

"Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic"

Hans Hofmann, Artist

"Nothing they design ever gets in the way of a work of art"

Robert Hughes, Critic

"I consider skateboarding an art form, a lifestyle and a sport"

Tony Hawk, Athlete

"Theatre is how I first encountered art on any level"

Patrick Marber, Writer

"The disco sound, you must see, is not art or anything so serious"

Giorgio Moroder, Producer

"I think good art happens on that edge between comfortable and in a lot of pain, you know what I mean?"

Liz Phair, Musician

"If you don't get noticed, you don't have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks"

Leo Burnett, Businessman

"One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear"

Marilyn French, Author

"I am a real person that cares about his art and cares about what he's doing - I have a heart and a soul and want to touch people and give"

LL Cool J, Musician

"But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple"

Leo Ornstein, Composer

"I became an art major, took every art class my school had to offer. In college, I majored in Advertising Art and Design"

Len Wein, Cartoonist

"Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence"

Jeanette Winterson, Novelist

"Yes, the more I go through life I realize that there's really no separation between practice and art at all. The two things more and more become one rather than two different aspects of my life"

Meredith Monk, Composer

"There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music"

Jim Davis, Cartoonist

"I wish to share and pass down some of my generation's traits, and encourage young people to create their own art, music, and literature"

David Amram, Composer

"But generally speaking, people weren't fired, art jobs were very hard to get, so something really calamitous had to happen to a person who was working there in order for you to find a space"

Gil Kane, Artist

"Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing"

Henry Moore, Sculptor

"Basically, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another person's taste, and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator"

Henry Flynt, Artist

"I love the art of acting, and I love film, because you always have anther chance if you want it. You know, if we - if this isn't going well, you can't say - well, you could say - let's stop. Let's start over again, Gene, because you were too nervous"

Gene Wilder, Actor

"Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!"

Gene Wilder, Actor

"Television is much better crafted today then in the 70s. The content is less positive but I'm one of those that feel our entertainment reflects our world, it's not a driver - art imitates life"

Christopher Knight, Actor

"But I had two very special people who helped to take my style to the next level. Thank God for my first MC Cowboy and my first student Grand Wizard Theodore, and to go out after creating this art form and finding everyone jamming to it - that too was pretty scary"

Grandmaster Flash, Musician

"Senator Helms might very well do that. I would point out to him that we in the art world are not necessarily in the business of making controversial art"

Jane Alexander, Actress

"No one's conception of art is going to be acceptable to everybody"

Jane Alexander, Actress

"That kind of piece, perhaps most recognizable because of Yoko Ono's similar work, built a bridge between performance art and music - and without raising any awkward social issues"

Tony Conrad, Artist

"The early expression of my youth was filled with all the aspects of art"

Felix de Weldon, Sculptor

"To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is"

David McCullough, Historian

"For me the purest and truest art in the world is science fiction"

C. J. Cherryh, Writer

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