Art Quotes

Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.

~ Franz Grillparzer

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

~ Horace Walpole

To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.

~ Laura Riding

I do like to write nasty songs. It's a useful weapon to have, and it's cathartic as well, because I create art out of anger, something positive out of something negative.

~ Lisa Marie Presley

Like every art form, there are jealousies and angers and competitiveness in magic. But there's camaraderie among magicians, whether you perform it for a living or you're an enthusiast.

~ Ricky Jay

The spirit of the Olympic movement is great for young people because it teaches them about the training and discipline required to compete. Even if they don't make the teams, they can rededicate their lives to the art of sport, discipline, and physical fitness.

~ Richard M. Daley

Most of the time, people look at a piece of art online when it is just a few blocks from their house. Changing the way you walk home everyday fills life with surprises.

~ Jr

The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not.

~ Adolf Loos

I don't think I am that materialistic, actually. Obviously at home in the country the art collection is important, but we have one big room in the middle of the house where we do everything - the television, the kitchen, everything.

~ Andrew Lloyd Webber

I adore art... when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.

~ Giuseppe Verdi

Telling stories with visuals is an ancient art. We've been drawing pictures on cave walls for centuries. It's like what they say about the perfect picture book. The art and the text stand alone, but together, they create something even better. Kids who need to can grab onto those graphic elements and find their way into the story.

~ Deborah Wiles

All art stems from a place of alienation. Intimate and alone. Most people are oppressed by the opinion of others, but I was not that way. I was afraid of the repercussions of not doing what I was told to do, what I was called to do by a creator.

~ Ceelo Green

Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument.

~ William Morris Hunt

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.

~ Brian Eno

I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned.

~ Yayoi Kusama

I'm not really sure what social message my art carries, if any. And I don't really want it to carry one. I'm not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way.

~ Roy Lichtenstein

Contemporary art will help me to modernise our society.

~ Victor Pinchuk

In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.

~ Julian Barnes

It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

~ Herbert Read

When art is defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, you've got a society that's impoverished.

~ Robert Adams

I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody.

~ Robert Pinsky

Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years, anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.

~ Ai Weiwei

In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness.

~ Ivan Turgenev

Boxing's in my genes. I come from a fighting background. My dad and both my uncles were good boxers. I'm blessed with the art of war.

~ Floyd Mayweather

To stay true to your art is such a complicated journey, and Dad clearly has done it.

~ Laura Dern

My dad used to draw these great cartoon figures. His dream was being a cartoonist, but he never achieved it, and it kind of broke my heart. I think part of my interest in art had to do with his yearning for something he could never have.

~ Kathryn Bigelow

When it came to the stylish and graceful art of ballroom dancing, my dad was a king of the clubs, a prowling tiger and a wonderfully natural mover.

~ Bruno Tonioli

I wanted to emulate my parents - Mum captained India in basketball, and Dad won a bronze in hockey in 1972 Olympics. My focus has always been to achieve excellence whether in the field of tennis, in the corporate field, in the art of acting or in motivating youngsters.

~ Leander Paes

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.

~ Camille Paglia