Famous Quotes & Sayings

E. O. Wilson

In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story.

E. M. Forster

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

E. M. Forster

But why I cry out against Rubens is because he painted undressed people instead of naked ones.

E. M. Forster

A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.

E. M. Forster

A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.

E. M. Forster

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

E. M. Forster

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

E. M. Forster

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

E. M. Forster

History develops, art stands still.

E. M. Forster

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Drew Bledsoe

Fairly early in my career, I had a passion for wine just as a consumer, and I started to learn about the whole process, starting with a piece of raw ground, and ending up with a work of art in a bottle.

Drew Barrymore

Kissing in the movies is a real art - figuring out where to put your heads so it looks good on camera. I have had other co-stars who couldn't work that out, which made it a lot harder for me.

Douglas Sirk

There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art.

Douglas Sirk

So slowly in my mind formed the idea of melodrama, a form I found to perfection in American pictures. They were naive, they were that something completely different. They were completely Art-less.

Douglas Sirk

This is the dialectic - there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.

Douglas Rushkoff

I went to Cal Arts and AFI, and I worked on 'Bonfire Of The Vanities.' I got this grant from the Academy to be Brian De Palma's apprentice director. And it was such a harrowing, disillusioning, awful experience.

Douglas Rushkoff

This is why it might be more useful to understand the proliferation of interactive media as an opportunity for renaissance: a moment when we have the ability to step out of the story altogether. Renaissances are historical instances of widespread recontextualisation. People in a variety of different arts, philosophies and sciences have the ability to reframe their reality. Renaissance literally means 'rebirth'. It is the rebirth of old ideas in a new context.

Doug Henning

The art of a magician is to create wonder. If we live with a sense of wonder, our lives become filled with joy.

Dorothy Malone

I had had no art training.

Dorothy Thompson

All great art ... creates in the beholder not self-satisfacti on but wonder and awe. Its great liberation is to lift us out of ourselves.

Donna Karan

I like the idea of having many different ways to express myself. There is a part of me as an artist and a creator who would like to express myself in many different ways. But then at the same time I know I have limited hours in the day, and I can only do so much successfully.

Donald Byrd

It's an incredible dilemma to be an artist of color and to always be in denial about that, saying, 'I'm a choreographer first and then I'm black,' when in fact, that's not the case. I'm black first and then I'm also a choreographer.

Donald Barthelme

I don't think you can talk about progress in art - movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it's a horizontal line, not a vertical one.

Donald Barthelme

Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.

Donald Barthelme

One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless.

Donald Barthelme

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.

Donald Barthelme

I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.

Donald Barthelme

The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.

Donald Barthelme

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.

Donald Barthelme

What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature... (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms).

Donald Barthelme

Any genuine work of art generates new work.

Don DeLillo

People say great art is immortal. I say there's something mortal in it. It carries a glimpse of death.