If you love something that somebody does—some art, some words, some sounds—you tell them that you love it. You tell everyone how much you love it, repeatedly and enthusiastically. Don’t save your appreciation for later, or worry about wearing people out with your passion. Because the happy truth is this: If a piece of art truly moves you, you will never, ever run out of new adjectives to express how much you love it. Getting to love someone’s art is one of the very finest parts of being alive.
—Paul Constant
The author of genius does keep till his last breath the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child, the “innocence of eye” that means so much to the painter, the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new… This freshness of response is vital to the author’s talent… But there is another element to his character, fully as important to his success. It is adult, discriminating, temperate, and just. It is the side of the artisan, the workman, and the critic rather than the artist. It must work continually with and through the emotional and childlike side, or we have no work of art. If either element of the artist’s character gets too far out of hand the result will be bad work, or no work at all. The writer’s first task is to get these two elements of his nature into balance, to combine their aspects into one integrated character.
—Dorothea Brande in Becoming A Writer
I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.
—Marcel Duchamp
Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.
—John Updike
A painting that is well composed is half finished.
—Pierre Bonnard
Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.
—Sir Ralph Richardson
Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.
—Robert Smithson
Painting is by nature a luminous language.
—Robert Delaunay
No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Layer by layer art strips life bare.
—Robert Musil
What is art but a way of seeing?
—Saul Bellow
Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.
—Thomas Wolfe
There is a difference between saying goodbye and letting go. Goodbye is not permanent. You can meet years later and share what happened in your life. You can smile and laugh about all the nonsense that you both went through. However, letting go is being okay with never seeing this person ever again… being okay with never knowing how their life turned out… being okay with fifty or more years of silence… being okay with running into that person at a grocery store and having them not acknowledge your presence. This is the part of life that doesn't sit well with me and never will. It tears my heart in pieces, robs me of gratitude, drains me of anything positive and eats at the faith that holds on.
—Shannon L. Alder
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
—Stella Adler
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
—Plutarch