The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
—James Baldwin
If art can reveal the truth, art can also lie. An artist can be not only divinely inspired, but diabolically inspired.
—George Bernard Shaw
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.
—John Ciardi
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
—Anaïs Nin
There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labor.
—Oscar Wilde
You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.
—Anne Lamott
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
—Paul Valéry
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
—George Orwell
Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
—Mary Pickford
A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.
—Edmond de Goncourt
The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.
—William Faulkner
We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
—Robert Wilensky
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
—Pablo Picasso
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.
—Shelley Winters
There are painters who transform the sun to 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